Why the Gospel Is Jesus Christ

CONSECRATE Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.  Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you.  Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.  HEAR Mark 1:14–15 ESV Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” CONSIDER Welcome to the Gospel according to Mark and our second leg of this Tour de Gospels on the Wake-Up Call. One down—three to go! And we've already invented a new word together. Gospelling—the act of following Jesus together through the Gospels—beholding his glory that we might become his goodness. But what actually is the gospel? We think we know until we are asked.  The average Christian might describe the gospel as being saved from sin so you can go to heaven when you die. That's not wrong. It's just a woefully inadequate explanation. An evangelist might take us down the Romans Road with the classic Jeremiah 29:11–inspired prelude of, "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life." This would be followed up with the bad news of Romans 3:23: "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God," a side of  Romans 6:23: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gracious gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord," followed by the Romans 5:8 close: “But God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Now cue the Sinner's Prayer and we have what most modern evangelical Christians would call the gospel.  Again, this is remarkably good news, but it is not so much what the gospel is as how the plan of salvation works. With his first words in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus preaches the gospel. The message comes in at a mere eighteen words and clocks in at eleven seconds. Here it is: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” And, if you are anything like me, you are asking, "So, Jesus, what is this gospel you call us to believe?" Then it hit me. He just told us.  “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand."  Can I bring what I think Jesus identifies as the gospel—which simply means "good news"—to its simplest terms? Two words: Now. Here.  The good news? God is now here.  That means we can bring the bad news down to its simplest terms: God was not here.  Let's remember, the world had been separated from God, utterly alienated since Genesis 3. With the exception of a relatively obscure group of people who stewarded the revealed presence of the one, true, and living God for over a thousand years in a building they call "the temple" in a Middle Eastern country roughly the size of the state of New Jersey—God was not here. The world was left to its own devices and even God's chosen people—Israel—had done such a poor job at their appointed task, God had seemingly left the building and not spoken a word to them for four hundred years.  Then this Jewish carpenter from Nazareth shows up, not in the religious center, Jerusalem, but in the rural confines of Galilee. This royal King of all kings, disguised as a small-town peasant, shrouded with the mysterious lore of prophetic revelations and angelic visitations and even astronomical constellations, appears on the scene in roughly the year AD 30  preaching a message he refers to as the gospel.  “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand."  God is now here.  As I sit here in my smaller than small town location, a rural preacher from nowhere with the miraculous capability to speak to people literally everywhere, I want to propose a historical amendment to the tiny and cliched phrase so easily bandied about when it comes to religion and faith: "The gospel of Jesus Christ." The phrase implies the gospel can be reduced to a message or perhaps a set of truth claims or propositions. It can include such but can never be reduced to them. Here's my proposed amendment: The gospel is Jesus Christ.  God was nowhere to be found. Jesus came to find us. In that word, "nowhere," add a space between the "w" and the "h." What does it spell? Now Here. The time is fulfilled: now. The kingdom of God is at hand: here. That is the gospel. God is now here.  PRAY Our Father, in your Son, Jesus Christ, you are now here. I want to keep saying this very good news, "God is now here," until I am fully awakened to feel the fact of it. Wherever you are, everything awakens to its highest good, deepest purpose, and fullest life, which is what repentance means. Come, Holy Spirit, put my quiet belief into the fiery forge of repentance until it becomes roaring faith. Praying in Jesus's name, amen.