Quotes about Gospel

we should be in no doubt that, for the gospel writers themselves, there was never a kingdom message without a cross

gospel-driven holiness is mandatory for the crucified and risen people of the Messiah. The world has been crucified to them, and they to the world. Because of the cross, they are part of the new creation. This is what happens once we leave behind the old "works contract" and, as new-Passover people, embrace the biblical "covenant of vocation.

Paul's explanation for why the gospel, the unveiling of God's justice and salvation, is urgently required is that the tree is rotten to the core, and might come crashing down at any minute.

To imagine a world without the gospel of Jesus is to imagine a pretty bleak place

The statement that in the gospel events God has unveiled and displayed his dikaiosyn? is most naturally to be taken as the statement that the promise has been fulfilled and the purpose accomplished.

What Paul is saying is that the gospel, through which people receive the divine gift, reconstitutes them as genuine humans, as those who share the "reign" of the Messiah.

No, insists Paul, once you learn the meaning of the gospel, you have to see everything inside out.

When Paul talks in his letters about 'the gospel', he doesn't primarily mean 'the way you too can get saved'. He means 'the message that says that Jesus, the crucified and risen one, is the Lord of the whole world'.

There are good things going on in the wider world, and we must join in while always remaining on the lookout for the point where we will be asked to do something that goes against the grain of the gospel. There are wicked things going on in the wider world, and we must stand out against them while always remaining on the lookout for the point where we become mere dualists, retreating from the world, which is already charged with the grandeur of God.

The gospel was—and is—the powerful announcement that the world has a new lord and the summons to give him believing allegiance.

All of this suggests that Mark's gospel, with Jesus himself as the great Character who stands behind it, is inviting us to something not so much like rule-keeping on the one hand or following our own dreams on the other, but a way of being human

As we shall see, it is only when we take fully into account the gospel writers' belief that Jesus was involved in the ultimate battle against the ultimate forces of evil that we can begin to see how their combination of kingdom and cross—and, looking wider, of incarnation, kingdom, cross, and resurrection—makes sense.