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Kindle Notes & Highlights
The gospel of Jesus in the Gospels is about the kingdom of God, not first and foremost about your sins or my sins, but about how God’s kingdom is arriving through Jesus’s kingship.
Over and over in the Gospels the reader is summoned to answer one simple question: Who is this man? The primary question is not, How can I get saved? Nor is it, How can I go to heaven when I die? No, over and over the question is about the identity of Jesus.
The content of the message in the Gospels is that the kingdom of God has drawn near because Jesus is the king. The gospel’s primary purpose follows from that: we need to know who the king is and to become allegiant to him. As the installed king, King Jesus saves and rescues and justifies and sanctifies and glorifies. Those acts don’t make him the king. Those acts are because he is the king. Bates is right: first king.
both Yes to kingship and Yes to forgiveness.
If the gospel is that Jesus is the King, then discipleship is about allegiance to King Jesus.
If we want to know God’s heart, then the gospel’s why is even more vital than its what, because it carefully attends to God’s motives.
why is the gospel still compelling in the contemporary world?
I’ve found that the answers most often advanced about the why of the gospel are either flat-out wrong from a biblical standpoint, or they are partially right but disconnected from what Scripture says about the gospel’s widest purposes and ultimate aims.
as we answer Why the gospel? we also gain fresh insights into related questions: What is the gospel? and How should we live out the gospel today? and How can I share the gospel well with others?
forgiveness is not the most accurate starting point.
the Bible never directly says the purpose is heaven.
we are convinced that we receive something else first in the gospel.
God gave the gospel first of all because we need a king.
The gospel is king first. When the Bible describes the proclamation of the good news, again and again the summarizing message is simply that Jesus is the Christ.
The gospel is best summarized as Jesus is the Christ.
it is incumbent to begin by asking: Why a messiah?
Jesus Christ is a claim not a name.
To call Jesus of Nazareth instead Jesus Christ is to assert that he is a specific type of king. Jesus Christ is a claim that Jesus is the Messiah, not a name.
By calling him Jesus Christ, our New Testament authors were claiming that God honored him with the ultimate kingship. God has exalted Jesus to his right hand where he reigns as the Messiah.
First, because the meaning of Christ is not readily apparent to the average person, but king is, call him instead King Jesus. Calling him King Jesus is a way to preach the gospel every time you refer to him.
Alternatively, try Messiah Jesus or Jesus the Messiah.
Third, instead of Jesus Christ, say Jesus the Christ.
Fourth, when fitting, take others deeper.
First, what does Christ or Messiah mean? Anointed one.
Jesus announced the good news as an unfolding process:
God’s ultimate salvation comes not simply through Jesus, but through Jesus in his specific capacity as the one enthroned at God’s right hand. From that position he is governing God’s new creation work. Jesus’s saving benefits are available only because he is first and foremost the King.
Jesus himself was a herald of the gospel before his death.
The basic framework for the gospel is “the kingdom of God.”
More precisely the content of Jesus’s gospel pertains to the fulfilment of time and the nearness of the kingdom of God.
The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the gospel is proclaimed to the poor. Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.”
Jesus’s active ministry provides the foundation for his reply to John.
what it meant for Jesus to preach the gospel was for him to announce that he—not Herod or any of his ilk—was God’s anointed king and that he would bring about the gospel announced in Isaiah of God’s reign—that is, God’s sovereign heaven-meets-earth rule.
The restoration of God’s reign over humanity is not something extra beyond salvation from our sins. Jesus’s kingship—in all it entails—is how humans are being saved from their sins.
he was sent to proclaim the good news about his kingship.
once he ascended to the right hand of the Father, the process of Jesus becoming the Messiah was then complete. Jesus had then become the Christ in the fullest sense.
the whole process
the message of the cross is further described as of the Christ. Paul’s words about the gospel and the cross here are both informed and qualified by Jesus’s kingship.
Kingship is the scaffolding within which the work of the cross is contextualized as gospel in the New Testament.
Paul doesn’t say Jesus of Nazareth died for our sins. He says the Christ died. He doesn’t say Jesus was raised. He says the Messiah was raised.
death and resurrection were not the endgame but ultimately were purposed toward something even more climactic: Jesus’s attainment of ruling authority.
Jesus’s death and resurrection were not ends in and of themselves but led to Jesus’s sovereign rule.
kingship is the most basic purpose of the gospel—even while the cross, resurrection, and other events are equally essential to its fullness.
giving us a king, so that the cross-and-resurrection benefits that attend his kingship can be experienced.
it is not on the basis of the cross and resurrection alone that forgiveness is offered. Rather, first Jesus had to receive the throne at God’s right hand.
Since the gospel emphasizes God’s gracious gift of Jesus as King, each person must respond with a commitment of “faith” or “allegiance” (pistis) to Jesus as King or Lord in order for the gospel to become effective for personal salvation
“faith” is something you demonstrate toward another through your bodily actions that express trust, faithfulness, obedience, loyalty, and allegiance.
Saving faith includes deeds of allegiance as part of its embodied expression.
A person is saved not simply by trusting in Jesus as Savior but by pledging “faith” (allegiance) to the Christ-King.
The gospel reveals the two greatest Christian mysteries: the incarnate King and the Trinity.
Personal salvation only comes by a commitment, however imperfect, to give allegiance to King Jesus.
