What is the gospel? The message of victory over sin and death contained in the Christian message

In 590 BCE, legend has it, the Greek soldier Pheidippides took part in the Battle of Marathon, watching in pride as the battle drew to a decisive victory for his home nation against the Persians. The pride was short-lived, however, as he witnessed a Persian vessel in the harbour turn and begin sailing in the direction of Athens. The harsh truth dawned upon Pheidippides: the Persians were going to arrive at Athens and tell the city the lie that the Persians had won the battle, causing a false concession on the part of Greece.

To prevent this disaster, Pheidippides took it upon himself to race on foot to Athens – a journey of almost 30 miles. The soldier threw down his weapons and ran. As he ran, he stripped off his armour and eventually his clothes, and continued to run in order to arrive before the boat could make the journey.

Eventually he arrived at Athens, wearied but triumphant, and burst into the assembly and proclaimed “νενικήκαμεν!” (“we have won!”) before he collapsed and died. In Greek, Pheidippides was an euangelos – a messenger of victory.

The noun “euangelion,” taken from the same root, occurs 76 times in the New Testament, and is translated by modern Bibles as “gospel.”In a similar way, it can be understood: “we have won.”

Read more:

Why I’m not shy about the gospel

4 reasons why Christians believe the Bible is God’s Word

Are The New Testament documents reliable?

Can the Bible teach us anything about depression?

An unexpected Messiah

The Gospel of Luke, chapter 24, sees a couple of disciples wearily plodding their way along the road to Emmaus when joined by a stranger. They are talking about Jesus, who had so recently been crucified, saying, “We had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel.”

Clearly these followers of Jesus were expecting something besides a man who was beaten and killed by demand of Jewish leaders at the hands of the pagan Romans. They, like all Jews, were expecting a conquering messiah who would fulfil God’s promise to Abraham, cast the interlopers out of the land, and establish the throne of David forever. They were expecting the gospel to be like the message of Pheidippides: military triumph over a battered and humiliated foe.

The stranger on the Emmaus road was, of course, Jesus himself. After hearing the despairing words of the sorrowful disciples, Jesus expanded upon their expectations, saying “Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?”

Upon making this statement, Jesus then “explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.”

When their leader was publicly executed in nakedness, the followers of Jesus naturally assumed the lie that they had lost the battle. They had chosen the wrong Messiah (meaning Chosen or Anointed One), and so their hope was lost.

So Jesus’s resurrection was as bewildering as it was amazing. Upon seeing the risen Jesus, the disciples could only wonder what they asked him in Acts 1:6: “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?”

So perhaps it was Jesus’s lot to die and be resurrected before he came as the conqueror they expected, but surely he would drive the Romans out and sit on David’s throne now that he was immortal… right? They were to be disappointed once again, for Jesus had an entirely different idea in mind: he was going to leave them and send the Holy Spirit in his place. No army, no king, no throne. What could this mean?

It meant what Jesus had been preaching his entire life: the kingdom of heaven.

Yes, he would be seated upon a throne, but it would not be upon a dais in Jerusalem. It was to be at the right hand of God in heaven. Jesus had, indeed, bested a foe that day. But it was no earthly foe belonging to Israel alone: rather it was the foe of the entire human race since the beginning - death itself.

Jesus instructed the disciples to go out into all of the world and proclaim the gospel: the good news that death had been defeated, and all men, Jews and Gentiles alike, could have eternal life in his name.

So the euangelos of the Bible did, indeed, proclaim through hill and dale the good news that “we have won!” or, rather “he has won!”

The gospel is the good news of Jesus’s battle with and decisive triumph over death and hell. But in proclaiming the gospel, the apostles were not instructed to simply pass the message along, but to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:16-20 NIV)

The contents of the gospel are not restricted simply to Jesus’s death and resurrection, but to his entire life. And how could they be otherwise? They were a tool of instruction, after all. And many of these contents are records of conversations and dialogue.

The dialogue as a teaching tool

Confucius was an ancient Chinese sage and instructor with a fair number of disciples. He apparently spoke a great deal, but wrote nothing, or at least nothing which survived. Whatever we know of Confucius came from things which were later written down by his disciples. The Analects of Confucius contain the occasional isolated bit of wisdom as though dropped from a fortune cookie, but most of these recorded sayings came in the form of conversations Confucius had with his disciples, with politicians, with challengers, and with people who simply sought him out.

Socrates was an ancient Greek sage known for his public speeches, but not for his writing. According to Plato, Socrates outright stated that he never wrote anything, and never intended to. Why? Because, Plato tells us, written words can be manipulated and misread, and are subject to change over time to whatever meaning the reader chooses to impose upon them. Conversations, on the other hand, allow the audience to interact with the teacher. Challenges are met, and questions are clarified. Various views are represented within the conversation in ways that mere assertions or uncontested arguments within a text never could be.

Consequently, as Plato penned dialogue after dialogue, he was able to teach through these conversations Socrates allegedly had with friends, foes, and followers alike.

The same thing is seen within the Gospels. Yes, Jesus (who never wrote anything of which we are aware) gives the occasional sermon, but most of what we know of him come from his dramatic interactions with his friends and foes, and the historical deeds he performed. Like the other sages of old, Jesus and his message are best understood in terms of the dialogues and drama they occupy.

Get access to exclusive bonus content & updates: register & sign up to the Premier Unbelievable? newsletter!

Quality as well as quantity

It is said that what all people long for is immortality, and with the proclamation of victory over death, this is what the gospel offers. However, an eternity during which one is impervious to death and damage still offers a variety of other kinds of misery. One need look no further than the stomach-churning suicide statistics each year to see that some people choose death over life because, to these people, to live is a fate worse than death. Something about the world is not right, and the tragedy of the world isn’t merely restricted to death.

The gospel isn’t simply a proclamation of victory over death, but also a proclamation of a victory over sin while in the world.

Sin is a word so associated with religious arrogance and judgementalism that its true importance has been diminished or even lost with time as people both irreligious and religious seek to distance themselves from the word.

And yet, at its root, the Hebrew words used for sin are defined more along the lines of failing to hit a target, or straying from a path. Sin appears to lie along a spectrum where, at one extreme, is pure evil, and at the other is failure to do good enough.

Jesus’s victory wasn’t merely over death, but also over the failure and imperfection which plague humankind. For those who choose to participate in Jesus’s victory, former failures or wicked deeds are forgiven, and the ability to actively do only those things which are right is bestowed.

Eternal life: what does it look like?

Without doubt, the most influential Christian teacher besides Christ himself is the Apostle Paul. Before becoming a Christian, Paul belonged to a group of Jewish teachers called the “Pharisees.” The distinctive teachings and beliefs of the Pharisees are many, but among these was the belief in a universal resurrection of the dead, and recreation of the material world upon the arrival of the Messiah.

At the time of Paul, your options for life after death were relatively limited among the Jews. You either died and remained dead for eternity, or you were resurrected at the coming of the Messiah. There was nothing like an eternal spiritual existence in some immaterial plane of being. That was for the pagans to believe.

For all his disagreements with the Pharisees, Jesus appeared to agree with them on this point, talking about the kingdom of heaven come to earth, arguing that the dead will, indeed be raised, and even claiming to personify the resurrection of the dead in himself.

And so it was for the church of the New Testament: the fate of the believer was to be resurrected – body and soul – and to live eternally on a new and perfected earth. This is the eternal life of the believer promised in the gospel: perfect body, perfect soul, perfect behaviour, perfect world ruled by a perfect king and God.

A word about free will

One of the most common arguments for why the world is as full of pain as it currently is, is the freedom of human will. It states very simply that in order to freely choose to love God or accept the Gospels, humans have to be free to choose otherwise. Given the freedom to behave badly, people will inevitably be poorly behaved.

Atheist philosopher Graham Oppy has latched onto this defence with a stunning rejoinder. “Aha!” says Oppy, “If freedom involves the ability to misbehave, then heaven will contain misbehaviour, or no freedom of will!”

In brief response to this point, I will say that the perfected world will be peopled exclusively by those who have already experienced an imperfect world, have made poor decisions and suffered the consequences, and have freely chosen to have their will conformed to Christ.

To paraphrase the noted atheist Penn Jillette, the resurrected Christians will behave exactly as they desire to behave. And they desire to behave like Christ. That is a choice made upon acceptance of the gospel in this world, and carries through into the perfected world.

So what is the gospel?

To summarise: the gospel is a message of victory – victory over death and victory over sin. The two complaints of the Problem of Evil are that people behave so badly toward one another, and that the world is filled with natural pain and death. Yet the gospel proclaims victory over all evils, both wilful and natural, to the glory of God in Christ.

Joel Furches is an apologist, journalist and researcher on conversion and deconversion, based in the USA.