Good News!
What is at the heart of the gospel message? This
question was recently asked by an online friend. My first thought was John 3:16. It’s a verse many of us learned as children,
one we often take for granted. We hear it and we recite the words but seldom
really think about it. Yet Luther referred to that very passage as “the Gospel
in miniature”.
A few years back I heard a decomposition of that verse. I
thought it was a helpful way to give meaning to something we often just recite
by rote. I’m not sure of its origin and I think there are a few variations but
here the one I’m familiar with:
For: Because
God: The greatest
lover
So loved: The
greatest degree
The world: The
greatest company
That He gave: The
greatest act
His only begotten Son:
The greatest gift
That whosoever: The
greatest opportunity
Believeth: The
greatest simplicity
In Him: The greatest
attraction
Should not perish:
The greatest promise
But: The greatest
difference
Have: The greatest
certainty
Everlasting life: The
greatest possession
To me, the sacrifice of Jesus and the opportunity for anyone
to receive His life eternally are at the heart of The Gospel.
Merriam Webster doesn’t use the good news definition. First, you need to sort through all the
references to it being a religious term. Then it lists an alternate meaning of
something promoted as an infallible truth or a guiding principle or doctrine. I’ve always been taught that the word gospel
means “good news”. So instead of the
dictionary, I went to Strong’s Concordance because it provides the meaning of
words in specific Bible passages. The
Gospel spoken of in the four Gospels of the New Testament as well as throughout
the epistles does mean glad tidings. Another meaning for it is a reward for
good tidings.
Well, what better news is there than knowing that when I
simply believe, I receive? Grace plus
NOTHING! That’s really good news. I don’t have to do a thing except to take
what God offers.
Some churches preach a social gospel or a liberation
theology or some form of interpretation that the heart of the gospel is to help
other people. It’s my opinion that
helping other people is a fruit that comes from our relationship with Christ
but not reason for the message. I
believe that sometimes this conclusion is reached when people look at the
passages relating to Jesus where the word Gospel is used and they see that in
almost every case, Jesus preaching the gospel was accompanied by healings and
by a message to the poor.
Let’s exegete some of those passages and see what we find
out.
Matthew 4:23 - Jesus
went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of
the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. In context, this verse it was early in
Jesus’ ministry. He had just begun to call his disciples and to begin his
preaching and teaching. The miracles
were one way to reach The Jews of that day. In 1 Corinthians 1:22 we read that
they sought a sign. To them it was an evidence of divinity. The gospel of the
kingdom can be translated as the good news of the royal power of Jesus as the
triumphant Messiah. (Strongs).
Luke 4:18 - The Spirit of the Lord is upon
me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent
me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and
recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised. This verse speaks of preaching the
gospel to the poor as well as ministering to others in need. This verse is in part an actual quotation of
Isaiah 61:1 which is a prophesy of The Messiah. Jesus was in Nazareth in the Synagogue reading
from The Scriptures. When he finished,
Luke 4:20 says all eyes were on Him. He then told them that the scripture that
day was fulfilled in their ears. If we
read the whole chapter, we see that this message from Jesus by sight did not go
well. He was rejected and driven out. No social acceptance there so his ministry
was not just about doing good things that made people happy.
In Barnes
Notes on The Bible, the commentator points out that the poor are “those who are
destitute of the comforts of this life, and who therefore may be more readily
disposed to seek treasures in heaven; all those who are sensible of their sins,
or are poor in spirit Matthew
5:3; and all the "miserable" and the afflicted, Isaiah 58:7. Our Saviour gave it as
one proof that he was the Messiah, or was from God, that he preached to
"the poor," Matthew
11:5”.
I love that
Jesus didn’t just stop at the poor. Some of the poorest people I know are
healthy and wealthy in ways that many more affluent people are not. He also healed the brokenhearted. The word
for brokenhearted is actually two words.
Broken means broken to shivers or broken in pieces. The word heart has several nuances and I’ve pasted the definitions from
Strong’s concordance because they say it best:
1) the
heart
a) that organ in the animal
body which is the centre of the circulation of the blood, and hence was
regarded as the seat of physical life
b) denotes the centre of
all physical and spiritual life
1) the vigour and sense of
physical life
2) the centre and seat of
spiritual life
a) the soul or mind, as it
is the fountain and seat of the thoughts, passions, desires, appetites,
affections, purposes, endeavours
b) of the understanding,
the faculty and seat of the intelligence
c) of the will and
character
d) of the soul so far as
it is affected and stirred in a bad way or good, or of the soul as the seat of
the sensibilities, affections, emotions, desires, appetites, passions
c) of the middle or central
or inmost part of anything, even though inanimate
Have you
ever met someone whose emotions desires, appetites and passions have been
crushed to shards? I think at times in
our lives that could be any one of us. This is the type of person Jesus
healed. Meanings for healed include
cured, made whole, and freed from errors and sins.
What else
does this verse say He did? He preached deliverance
to the captives. Preaching is
proclaiming, not the negative connotation many have that it is pounding people
over the head with a message.
Deliverance is release from bondage or imprisonment but it can also mean
forgiveness or pardon of sins, letting them go as if they’ve never been
committed. I’m jumping up and down here
at the notation in Stong’s
concordance. And I had to smile when
the definition for captive was just that: captive. The root of the word comes from a spear. Picture in the days in which this passage was
written, the police didn’t come with handcuffs. They came with spears and you
didn’t move or you would be skewered. You were captive. The application here is that we are held
captive by the effects of our sins but Jesus wants to wipe away the record and
the spears have to fall because there is no grounds on which to hold us
captive. He also brought about the
recovery of sight to the blind. The same word is used for both physical and
mental blindness. We know that Jesus
healed both. Then it says he set at
liberty them that were bruised.
Interestingly here, the word for liberty is the same word used in this
verse for deliverance and bruised means shattered or broken into pieces (not
quite the same as our commonly used English meaning of discolored skin or an
abrasion).
I had not
thought of the captive and the blind and those that are bruised as having necessarily
any relation to each other except as all being ministered to by Jesus. But Wesley in his notes on this passage has
this delightful revelation: “How is the doctrine of the ever - blessed trinity
interwoven, even in those scriptures where one would least expect it? How clear
a declaration of the great Three - One is there in those very words, The Spirit
- of the Lord is upon me! To proclaim deliverance to the captives, and recovery
of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised - Here is a
beautiful gradation, in comparing the spiritual state of men to the miserable
state of those captives, who are not only cast into prison, but, like Zedekiah,
had their eyes put out, and were laden and bruised with chains of iron. Isa
61:1.” To me, that’s the good news that
Jesus will redeem us from destruction.
There are
other verses that we could look at (among them: Matthew
9:35, Matthew 11:5, Mark 1:14, Luke 7;22, Luke 9:6) that refer to the gospel in
conjunction with healing or ministering to the poor. They are similar in nature to the two we just
looked at.