Simply Good News: Why The Gospel Is News And What Makes It Good

by Tom Wright

a new and unexpected development within a much longer story. In the first case, the announcement

The news in question makes sense within that longer story.

this news is about something that has happened, because of

which everything will now be different.

Third, the news introduces an intermediate period of waiting.

What good news regularly does, then, is to put a new event into an old story, point to a wonderful future hitherto out of reach, and so introduce a new period in which, instead of living a hopeless life, people are now waiting with excitement for what they know is on the way.

The gospel of Jesus Christ comes as news within a larger story. It points to a wonderful new future. And it introduces a new period of waiting that changes our expectations.

In many churches, the good news has subtly changed into good advice: here’s how to live, they say. Here’s how to pray. Here are techniques for helping you become a better Christian, a better person, a better wife or husband. And in particular, here’s how to make sure you’re on the right track for what happens after death. Take this advice: say this prayer and you’ll be saved. You won’t go to hell; you’ll go to heaven. Here’s how to do

If you thought you were destined for hell and suddenly someone told you God had done something about it, wouldn’t that be good news?’ Well, yes, it would. But – and this is the shocking and difficult thing for many people – that isn’t exactly the good news Jesus and the early church were talking about.

others have preserved the gospel as news, but they are telling a different story from what the New Testament authors meant by good news.

the usual heaven-and-hell scheme, however popular, distorts the Bible’s good news. Over many centuries, Western churches have got the story wrong. They have forgotten what the back story is (the larger story that gives meaning and context to the good news).

My main point, then, is that the Christian message is about good news, not good advice. And one of the reasons we need to sort this out is that many people have lived with a distorted version of the good news.

good news can only be understood in the context of a larger or earlier story. And if the gospel’s back story is that we’re all going to hell unless a new way opens up, then that message often comes across not in terms of news (an announcement of something that has happened) but in terms of advice (guidance on what we must do). The good advice sounds like this: ‘There is a heaven, and there is a hell, so if I were you I’d grab my chance to make the right choice.’ If there is any news there – perhaps the suggestion that Jesus offers a way of making that choice successfully – then my correspondent would be right: that is quite old news, and it is only good for the lucky ones who heed the advice.

instead of suggesting that we could escape the earth to go to heaven, Jesus’s good news was about heaven coming to earth. And there are many people inside and outside the church who have never heard this news. It isn’t only the atheists who have got hold of the wrong end of the stick.

Rugby World Cup.

A sporting contest is a contest: a game of winners and losers. We love it when our team wins, and

we hate it when they lose. The good news about Jesus isn’t supposed to be like that, though that’s the impression people often get.

another illustration. This one comes from the time and place where Jesus himself burst on the scene

Julius Caesar,

at last, Rome hears what has happened: ‘Good news! Octavian Caesar has won a great victory! He is now master of the whole Roman world!’ This is good news about something that has just happened. The back story

of the civil war has come to a close. Peace is at hand. The word good news became a regular slogan for announcing to the world that Octavian, soon to be acclaimed as Augustus, by which he is now more usually known, had brought peace, justice, and prosperity to the world.

But it would immediately imply good news for you about something that would shortly happen. Octavian, having won the victory, would be coming back to Rome. First he would have to consolidate his victory, especially in Egypt, which was to become a vital part of the empire. There would be military mopping-up operations to make sure the victory was fully implemented. It woul...

had brought peace to the whole world. During those two years, the city was poised between the news about something that had just happened – his decisive victory – and the expectation of something that would soon happen, namely his return in ...

During that time, people in Rome would know what was coming. Octavian would, of course, handsomely reward his friends and supporters. He would probably punish those who had supported Antony – not to mention those who had sided with Julius Caesar’s assassins in the first place. For the moment, though, the city...

shortly happen. So, if we ...

were a supporter of Augustus, the good news about the recent event and the good news about the imminent event would translate into good news about your life right now. Everything would look different. You and your family would prepare to celebrate. You would start to plan a whole new life. The world was going to change completely. Indeed, because of the recent victory, there would be a sense in which it was already a different place. And your life, right now, would be different as...

This is a perfect historical example of the way this type of good news worked in Jesus’s and Paul’s day – and ho...

think about how actual events occur in the real world, it becomes q...

Now suppose you had been on the other side. Suppose you had secretly supported the assassination of Julius Caesar. Or suppose you had wanted Antony to win in the final showdown. I suggested a moment ago that this news might mean it was time for you to leave town in a hurry. But there was an alternative. Herod the Great, a powerful warlord in the Jewish homeland, had been made king of the Jews by the Roman authorities. He, like much of the Middle East, had supported Antony. He was now on the wrong side. But H...

a friend I have been. That’s what I shall be to you. Octavian, no stranger to realpolitik, reaffirmed Herod’s place as king of the Jews. For Herod, the news of what had happened, and what it meant in terms of what would shortly happen, created a challenge to which he responded by casting himself on the mercy of the one who would no...

This example from the ancient Roman world is not, of course, selected at random. It isn’t just an odd fragment of ancient history that merely happens to carry the same triple pattern – something that happened, something that will happen, a radical chan...

the Roman emperors regularly used the words good news to describe both what they had already achieved and what life would now be like as a consequence. When the early Christians used this language, they used it in a similar way. Something had happened because of which everything was now different. Something would happen that would complete this initial victory (like Octavian returning to Rome and setting up his court). As ...

Jesus of Nazareth was a real man, living and dying at a turbulent moment in real space-time history. His message, and the message about him that the early Christians called good news, was not about how to escape that world. It was about how the one true God was changing it, radically and for ever.

Come with me, then, back into that first-century Roman world, so that we can come to grips with what the Christian good news meant when it was first announced there. Let us find our way to a seaport in northern Greece, in the middle of the first century AD – a world by then quite familiar with the good news of the Roman Empire under Augustus and his successors.

There, in this seaport, we come upon an odd, shabby, energetic little man announcing good news and watching as people’s lives were transformed by it. Who ...

doesn’t mean the good news is in fact incomprehensible, or meaningless, or stupid. But it will sound like that to some who hear it,

Paul believed he had a royal commission to announce the new good news to the world. The word he used for this commission, apostle, has become a dead metaphor in today’s world, but for him it carried a special sense: commissioner. One who has been charged with a responsibility.

who is responsible to the king for ca...

first letter to the Thessalonians is probably the earliest written record we have of the good news.

was not telling people about a new religious system. Nor was he urging them to adopt a new type of morality. He wasn’t offering them a new philosophy – a theory about the world,

is, simply, good news. It is the news that something has happened as a result of which the world is a different place. That is what the apostle Paul – Paul the royal commissioner – was announcing.

can debate the merits of a religion, moral system, or philosophy, but a news event is discussed in a different way. Either the event happened or it didn’t; if it did happen, either it means what people say it means or it doesn’t.

in the Roman world knew a major military victory could change everything.

Christian claim, remarkably, is that the world is a different place, in a different way, not because of Augustus but because of Jesus.

was about something that had happened, about something that would happen as a result, and about the new moment between those two, the moment in which people were in fact living, whether they realized it or not.

you might expect, the emphasis was always on what had happened. Everything else followed from that. Something had happened that changed everything,

He believed that he knew something worth announcing to surprised strangers: ‘Good news! You’ll never guess! The greatest news you can imagine!’

What did he think had happened that made an all-important difference to the world?

You turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead – Jesus, who delivers us from the coming fury. (1 Thess. 1:9–10)

the focus of Paul’s announcement. It was a message about Jesus, and consequently a message about a true God – as opposed