The other day I was giving feedback to a young preacher who asked for it. He had preached a sermon and it was great. Filled with good teaching, good stories, and great flow. He was an engaging communicator. I told him there was only one problem. For someone committed to want to preach the gospel in every sermon his message was void of it.

The word ‘gospel’ is popular today. Sometimes however, I notice that people say the word but they aren’t sure what it really means. They will say ‘you know, Jesus saves, so put your faith in him’. But the content of the gospel is not everything. And just talking about Jesus in general isn’t the gospel either. In its most focused sense the gospel is the message about the person and work of Jesus Christ. Specifically, his person, his work and his resurrection. That he is God, that he lived a perfect life, died a death in our place for our sins, and rose again victoriously from that death to offer us new life.

I include these elements because of the different passages one could go to to explain the gospel (Rom. 3:21-28; John 3:16), I think 1 Cor. 15:3-4 captures the strictest and most focused definition: “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures…”

Notice, there is nothing in here about faith in Jesus, or an obedient life, etc., That’s because they are not what the gospel is about. Our response to the gospel is not the gospel itself. There is a difference. Graeme Goldsworthy puts it this way:

“The main message of the Bible about Jesus Christ can easily become mixed with all sorts of things that are related to it. We see this in the way that people define or preach the gospel, but it is important to keep the gospel itself clearly distinct from our response to it or from the results of it in our lives and in the world…If our proper response to the gospel message is faith, then we should not make faith part of the gospel itself…it is a mistake to speak of the new birth as if it were itself the gospel. Faith in the new birth as such will not save us. It is therefore important to understand both what the gospel is, so that we include what must be believed, and what the gospel is not, so that we don’t require people to believe more than is necessary for salvation” (Graeme Goldsworthy, According to Plan, p. 81).

Our response to and the results of the gospel are not themselves the gospel. This is an important distinction for all of us – Christian, skeptic, or up and coming preacher! In that culture the gospel was a word used for Caesar’s victory over an enemy. A herald would walk into a town and tell them the ‘good news’ that Caesar had defeated an enemy. That’s what the gospel of Jesus is about. It is a news report about an event which has already taken place.

People say ‘but what about the kingdom of God, isn’t that the gospel Jesus preached’? Indeed, but we must understand that Paul’s words in 1 Cor. 15 are not different from the kingdom message of Jesus, but are the center of that same message (compare Mark 9:30-31; 10:33-34, 44-45). In Lesslie Newbigin’s words, ‘Jesus spoke of the kingdom and Paul spoke of the king.’

But, of course, there is always the second, crucial question to this news: what will the audience do with it? The Bible invites us to respond to the gospel through repentance and faith (Mk. 1:15). Turning from our sin and trusting in Jesus’ work on our behalf is what applies this work to our lives and makes us experience the eternal life he purchased for us on the cross and in the resurrection. Which is not just a quantity of life, but a quality.