There is so much confusion out there today about what constitutes the essential elements of the New Testament gospel. And so my conviction is that we are in a period of crisis with respect to our understanding of the actual biblical content of the gospel. What is the gospel? That is a vital question for a fallen sinner to be able to answer if they are to have the hope of eternal life. So today and tomorrow, R.C. Sprawl will help us understand the essential elements of the gospel. Hi, I'm Nathan W. Bingham, and thanks for joining us today for renewing your mind. As a teenager searching for truth, even though I asked, many professed Christians struggled to clearly communicate the content of the gospel to me. Then as a new Christian, my understanding of the work of Christ was shallow at best. That's why we don't assume that everyone listening or watching today knows the good news and why we revisit this topic often. To help you better understand the gospel and to put some resources into your hands that you can share with non-Christians, we'll unlock lifetime digital access to today's series, Meaning of the Gospel. Send you a copy of R.C. Sprawl's book, Saved from What, and send you two copies of his brief title, What is the Gospel? When you give a donation before midnight tomorrow at renewingyourmind.org. Read these books yourself or hand them out to family and friends. So what does the word gospel mean? Here's Dr. Sprawl. Today we're going to look at one of the most important themes that we ever encounter in the scriptures, and that's the theme of the gospel itself. Recently I was involved in teaching a course for clergy, and I had 40 ministers present from 17 different denominations. And I started this seminar by asking the question openly, what is the gospel? And I went to the blackboard and more or less moderated their discussion about the content and meaning of the gospel. And we worked on this problem for over an hour before, at least in my judgment, we came up with anything that adequately resembled the New Testament concept of the gospel. And I found that somewhat striking, that those who give their lives to the preaching of the gospel, and who are set apart and consecrated to the ministry of the gospel, would have such a difficult time giving definition to the gospel. Now I don't want to suggest that these particular individuals in that class were unusual or derelict or anything of that sort. It's just that there is so much confusion out there today about what constitutes the essential elements of the New Testament gospel. Again a year or so ago at the Christian Booksellers Convention, one ministry organization took a poll on the floor of the convention and asked a hundred delegates to the convention, and these were people who own Christian bookstores, what is the gospel? And in their estimation, out of the hundred that were polled, only one answer would have really captured the New Testament concept of the gospel. And so my conviction is that we are in a period of crisis with respect to our understanding of the actual biblical content of the gospel. And so I want to spend some time with you looking at this from an elementary introductory perspective on the meaning of the gospel as it is declared to us in the Scriptures. And let's start where I usually start, and that's with a little bit of a word study. The word gospel is the English translation for the Greek word A-1 Galeon. Now the term A-1 Galeon is made up of a prefix and a root. The prefix which we pronounce A-Wa is really E-U. And the way that prefix comes over into the English language is by the prefix that we find attached to many words that is pronounced simply U-E-U, and we pronounce it U. The prefix is found in words like euphonics, which means what? Good sounds. Eulogy, which is a good word that is stated about somebody usually in the context of a funeral oration, or euphemism is stating something unpleasant and pleasant or good terms. And so that prefix E-U, or you, simply means good. And the root, A-galeon, is the same word from which we get the biblical word angel. An angel in Greek is an ongelos. And the reason why angels are called angels is that their chief function in the New Testament is to act as messengers for God. It's the angel Gabriel who announces to Zechariah of the birth of John the Baptist. The same angel is sent to Mary to announce the impending birth of Jesus, the Messiah. And so angels are called messengers because that's their primary function. So if we put the root, ongelon, which means message, together with the prefix A-U, you have the word A-one-galeon, which means literally a good message. We carry that over into English and talk about the good news. Now, the term in the Greek language is used widely and also within the context of the sacred scriptures, even in the Greek translation of the Old Testament. That is, in its simplest meaning. The term gospel, or A-one-galeon, refers to any message of good tidings. For example, you go back to the Old Testament and we read of the account of the confrontation between David and Goliath. And when David is victorious over the Philistine giant, the report is then spread throughout the land. And that report of the announcement of this decisive victory over the Philistines is called the gospel. That is, it's good news. So that any good report could be called gospel in the ancient world. But of course, when we come to the New Testament, the term gospel takes on a more technical, specialized meaning. It refers not to any good news in general, but a specific kind of good news with a specific content. Now, in terms of Christian history, I can distinguish at least three ways in which we use the term gospel. One of the ways, one of the most common ways in which we hear the term being used is from what developed in early church history. The first four books of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, became known in the early church as the four gospels. Because the content of these first four books of the Bible, or of the New Testament, focused attention to some degree or another on a biographical summary of the life and the teaching of Jesus. And since Jesus in His person and in His work becomes the central focal point of what the New Testament calls the gospel, the books that give us a report of His life and teaching became known as gospel. So one of the ways in which the term gospel is used in Christian history is to refer to a specific literary form, that literary form that was used in these biographical sketches of the life of Jesus in compiles. I said the first four books of the New Testament. But when we go to the pages of the New Testament itself, there we find a progressive understanding and usage of this specific term gospel. And so what I want to look at first is what I'm going to call the gospel according to Jesus. That is the way in which the term or concept of gospel functions in the teaching of Jesus. We recall that Jesus was a preacher as well as being a teacher and a healer and all the rest. When Jesus began His public ministry, His public ministry was initiated by a public proclamation. And that public proclamation was in its initial stages precisely the same abbreviated message that had first been heralded by John the Baptist. When John came out of the wilderness and came preaching to the nation of Israel, the simple message that he proclaimed according to the summary that we have from the gospel writers was what? Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand. And then Jesus, following a little later, comes and introduces His public teaching with the same announcement. Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand. Now when we look at the content of Jesus' teaching with respect to the idea of gospel, we see that the central theme, the chief motif of the concept of the gospel in Jesus' own preaching is the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven. The good news that Jesus proclaims is the breakthrough of the kingdom of God. And he announces a slight difference from John at this point in that John talks about the kingdom of God's being at hand, His axis laid at the root of the tree, His fan is in His hand. He speaks of the radical nearness of the coming of the kingdom of God. And there's a little change in emphasis when Jesus begins His ministry and His preaching but tells now He says the kingdom of God is not just at hand, but it is in your midst. In a sense He says, if you see me casting out Satan by the finger of God, then you know that the kingdom of God has come upon you. And many of Jesus' parables are designed to elucidate this motif of the announcement of the kingdom. How many of His parables begin with the preface, the kingdom of God is like unto this or the kingdom of God is like unto that? And so when scholars look at the use of the concept of gospel in the teaching of Jesus, they will abbreviate it by saying that Jesus preached the gospel of the kingdom. Then by the time we get to the epistles and to the apostolic testimony about Jesus, about His person and His work, then we hear the more familiar idea of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now I'll explore that with you later on, but for now I want us to understand that when we see Paul, for example, speaking about the gospel of Jesus or the gospel of Jesus Christ, he is not differing or protesting or contending against the motif of Jesus' proclamation about the gospel, because when we look at Jesus' announcement about the coming of the kingdom of God, he's not concerned simply to talk about some abstract idea of heavenly rule that is then transferred to a message about him by the apostles. On the contrary, if you look closely at Jesus' preaching and His preaching about the kingdom, Jesus is preaching about Himself, because the coming breakthrough of the kingdom of God and the crisis that is associated with it in the proclamation of Jesus is the crisis that's directly related to what? His being there, and His personal ministry, and His redemptive task. So He is the Messiah who is God's anointed king who now appears in history. And so we could boil down the message of the kingdom of God by saying the good news that is being proclaimed is that the long-awaited Messiah, the long-awaited King after the seed of David, has finally come into history to do His redemptive work. So what I'm saying at this point is that the gospel of the kingdom is not a different gospel fundamentally from the gospel of Jesus Christ. But when we go then to the epistles, or even to the book of Acts, and we look at the preaching, of Jesus, but of the apostles, then we discern what again scholars call, making use of another Greek word, the charisma, K-E-R-Y-G-M-A, the charisma. I was in college, I was studying in a pre-ministerial program, and there was a kind of fraternity for pre-ministerial students, and this organization was called CAREX, K-A-R-U-X. And that was because it was taken from the Greek word for preacher or preaching. And so this word, carigma, has to do with the preaching of the early church. And if we look, for example, at the sermons that are recorded for us by the apostles in the book of Acts, Peter's speech at Pentecost, Stephen's speech, and so on, and find other examples of the apostolic preaching, we see certain ideas or elements that are routinely proclaimed in the initial proclamation of the infant church. And again, they focus on the person and work of Christ. Now, not every one of these sermons contains every element of this basic outline of the pattern of Jesus' work, but there is a recurring theme of certain elements of his activity that when we put them all together, we call it the carigma. Now, there's another reason why this term carigma is important to our understanding of the early church, because the early church had another word that was important to their strategy and to their program, which was called did-a-kay. In fact, there's a book from very early Christian history that's titled simply the did-a-kay. And the did-a-kay comes from the same Greek word from which we get the English word didactic. That which is didactic is that which teaches or instructs. And so in the New Testament, a teacher was called a didosculose, one who is involved with the didactic enterprise, one that is involved with did-a-kay or teaching. And so there's a clear distinction in the early church between the carigma and the did-a-kay for this reason. Much of the preaching in the early church, though it began with a proclamation to Jewish people assembled in Jerusalem and in the Jewish regions thereabout, very soon the preaching of the gospel expanded to Gentile nations. And the Gentiles did not have a background knowledge of all of the content that we find in the Jewish scriptures of the Old Testament. And so the preachers of the early church, when they confronted the Gentiles, did not have time to start with Adam and go through Noah and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and David and Jeremiah and all of those things, they would simply give a boiled down version of the significance of the person and work of Jesus. And so their strategy was to preach the carigma or to preach the gospel and call for a response to Christ. And when people responded to that and then entered into fellowship with the early Christian church, then immediately they were engaged in a serious program of instruction. The instruction came after the carigma. People responded to the evangelism of the preaching and were brought then into the church and then they got filled in with the whole history of redemption, going back to Adam and Moses and David and all of that sort of thing, which became part of the did-a-kay. We also find in the epistles themselves a heavy emphasis on the didactic, on the explanation of the meaning and significance and application of what Jesus has done for us in His person and in His work. But again, the basic proclamation, the basic evangelism of the early church was a simple, basic outline of the life and work of Jesus that would announce, for example, that Jesus was a man born of a woman from the seed of David who was the incarnation of God, who was born of a virgin, and who then gave his life in an atoning sacrifice on the cross, was raised again from the dead so that the birth, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus became essential elements of the gospel or the carigma. But that wasn't all. Also associated with the gospel was the good news of what this work of Christ does for our benefit and how we can gain the benefits from it so that the whole concept of receiving the benefits of the work of Christ by faith becomes an extremely important element of the gospel as we will examine in our next session. We have seen a basic introduction today of the meaning of the term gospel. That is that it has to do with the announcement of the good news of the person and work of Christ. And it is by the gospel that the church became established in the first century and the church understood her mission to be chiefly involved in the proclamation of that message. Now the gospel that is preached in the New Testament is not a novelty as if there were no hints of it in the Old Testament. We look at the prophets and the teachings of the Old Testament and they give us a foreshadowing of the gospel that is to come. Before I sign off today though, there is something I'd like to say to those of you who are listening. Recently somebody told me that is involved in Christian radio that for every hundred and fifty people who listen to a program, one person will contact the ministry. And I don't know how true that is, but if you are among the hundred and forty-nine that are listening to this program who have never contacted us, I do hope that today you will take an opportunity to give us a call and tell us that you are listening to the program or that you are interested in the things of this program, because we do need to hear from you to know that these lectures are ministering to you. That was R.C. Sproul on this Monday edition of renewing your mind, inviting you to give us a call. Of course, I'd love to hear from you in the YouTube comments as a review in your favorite podcast app or on social media. But if you have never contacted us before, call us as Dr. Sproul said, and we'll send you a free copy of his book, What Is the Gospel? That number is 800-435-4343. And this is a special offer for first-time contacts only. Well, I'm glad you're with us today, especially as we're learning about such an important topic. A popular book that Dr. Sproul wrote is called Saved From What, and in it he explains that we are saved from God, by God, for God. It's an extremely helpful overview of the Gospel, and it's an example of how we can communicate the Gospel to others. And we'll send you a copy, plus two copies of his book, What Is the Gospel? And add today's series, Meaning of the Gospel, to your digital library. When you call us at 800-435-4343, or visit renewingyourmind.org with a donation in support of the Gospel outreach of renewing your mind. That's three books and a digital series from R. C. Sproul. When you show your support at renewingyourmind.org, or by using the link in the podcast show notes. And for our global listening audience, there is a digital edition of this offer waiting for you at renewingyourmind.org slash global. Thank you for your generosity as it makes renewing your mind possible day in and day out. Many Christians talk about sharing their testimony, and it's a wonderful thing to share what the Lord has done in your life, but is sharing your testimony of evangelism. R. C. Sproul will tackle that, so he continues to examine the content of the Gospel. That'll be Tuesday, here on Renewing Your Mind.
