The Gospel According to Us
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.
—1 John 1:1
In our culture of individualism and commodity we have recast the Gospel into a set of propositions to be believed or rejected. We have assumed that the Gospel—that Jesus loves us and gave his life for us—is something independent of us, that it is the “it” we believe in order to be saved. In this I think we are mistaken.
I like the way some of the older Bibles used to head the first four books of the New Testament: The Gospel According to Matthew; The Gospel According to Mark; The Gospel According to Luke; The Gospel According to John. The editors of those versions recognized that the Gospel, as founded in eternal truth as it was, must always be according to somebody. In other words, there is no such thing as the Gospel by itself; it finds its reality through someone’s experience. In order for the Gospel to be the Gospel, it must have a witness.
This was the bottom line for Isaiah, who wrote: “You are my witnesses,” declares the LORD, “and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me. God’s entire revelatory program to the world was founded, not in his direct action, but in testimony. What God could have done directly, he chose to do though the testimony of witnesses. Even Jesus saw his role in terms of witnessing: “All things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.” Jesus was not working on his own, he was doing only what he saw the Father doing. Just like John the Baptist before him, Jesus was a witness to the light.
The church too is a witness. We are not to “present” the Gospel as a thing in itself; that is no gospel at all. The real Gospel is not that Jesus loves us and saves us, but that we have experienced that love and redemption and testify to it. In this very important way, we who believe are the Gospel because we are its necessary witnesses. Without us, there is no good news. And this is precisely the way God would have it.
The Gospel is not proposition or commodity. It is ultimately our experience of it that makes it good news for others, both within the church and outside it. We are the Gospel evidence and validation in the world, not some words on a printed page—even if it’s the printed page of the Bible. This does not mean that the Gospel isn’t true apart from us. Of course it is. But the Good News enfolds us as the message of its truth and becomes the Gospel according to us.
What is the good news? We are, my friends. We are.
November 6, 2007 at 3:45 pm
I’ll apologize up front in the event that I’ve misunderstood what you were saying. That being said, here are some thoughts:
While I tend to agree that the Gospel may not be the “the ‘it’ we believe in order to be saved,” I have to disagree that the Gospel doesn’t exist apart from our witness of it. That seems to be a version of the great existential question, “if a tree falls in the forest…”
As Paul explains in Galatians, the Gospel is a fulfillment of God’s covenant with Abraham. Certainly there are witnesses, but as Jesus told the Jews in his day, “hey, I don’t need your testimony.” There is also a distinction between “witnessing” something and “testifying” about it. God makes us witnesses, whether we choose to believe it or not, or whether we choose to “testify” to it or not (Romans 1). We are witnesses in that God has said to people like Noah, Abraham and to us, “You, come here. Watch this!” Our role as witness is often (if not always) passive; as we have seen consistently throughout the Bible, man always fails on his end, but is still considered righteous out of his belief in God’s faithfulness.
I believe that the Gospel does indeed exist – “For God so loved the world…” – apart from individual experience (witness) of it. In that way, there is absolutely nothing individualistic about it. It is also not, as you said, “a set of propositions to be accepted or rejected;” it remains something much deeper. As with all of God’s covenants, it is not dependent upon man, but we are allowed – even compelled – to witness God at work.
I agree with a part of your main point, that the Gospel is neither proposition nor commodity; it is something much richer. I believe the Gospel is mere Reality that remains unchanged regardless of our experience of it; we, however, are changed, although certainly not totally perfected. But, “we who believe are the Gospel?” I am thinking that the Good News is better than that.
November 6, 2007 at 4:15 pm
You’ll note I did affirm that the Gospel is true apart from us, but that that truth is always conveyed by witnesses, whether Jesus or the church. Without that witness, and by this I mean the incarnation of that truth, there is nothing meaningful conveyed—which is not good news at all.
My ground zero point here is that we simply cannot distinguish, in any Biblically meaningful way, the good news apart from its incarnational messengers. It is always, and intended to be so, a Gospel according to somebody.
December 12, 2007 at 8:23 am
Guess I took your commentary in the manner it was written.
If we who profess Christ in our lives are not the living expressions and examples of God dwelling the spirit of humanity, then what “Good News” is there?
I love that John identifies Christ as the “Word made flesh.” In similar, albeit a redeemed vice inherently holy manner, we are smaller versions of His word – we are gospel voices of hope to the hopeless in this world.
January 17, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Just a note of clarification. Jesus was and is the light. John the Baptist came to witness to the light but Jesus was the light.
January 18, 2008 at 10:17 am
Yes, the church is a witness just as Jesus himself was a witness. But our actual participation in the divine nature means that we are not vicarious witnesses, but authentic “proof” of the kingdom of God. As Paul writes: “For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing.” His sense of our role in the Gospel leads him to exclaim, “And who is equal to such a task?”
We must resist the idea that we are “only” witnesses to the light. Jesus told his disciples, “You are the light of the world.” This is a high view of the church indeed!