The Gospel

Summary

The New Testament contains four ancient biographies of Jesus — the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — and together they are called "the Gospel," which means "good news." These books are best read from beginning to end so the reader can see how Jesus' story brings the entire biblical storyline to its fulfillment. The good news is that God's Kingdom has arrived in Jesus, the crucified and risen King who is restoring humanity and beginning a new creation, and the Gospels are designed to persuade readers to trust and follow him.

Key Points

What "Gospel" Means

• The word "gospel" means "good news."
• In Mark's Gospel, Jesus enters announcing that the time is fulfilled, God's Kingdom has come near, and people should turn around and trust this good news (Mark 1:14-15).
• The good news is about God's Kingdom arriving — Jesus' way of summarizing the whole biblical story that leads up to himself.

The Biblical Storyline Behind the Good News

• God creates a good world and appoints humanity as his representatives to rule it, but humans rebel repeatedly, leading to violence and death.
• God chooses Abraham and his family to restart the project, and through Moses brings them into a land of abundance to restore all nations through them.
• Israel becomes a kingdom with great kings like David, but Israel also rebels and is led into destruction.
• Israel's prophets said God would personally come to restore Israel so his justice and peace could spread to all nations and all creation — this hope was called the Kingdom of God.
• Jesus' good news is that this Kingdom, the new creation, was arriving to restore humanity to their role as God's partners in ruling the world.

How the Gospels Connect to the Hebrew Scriptures

• The Gospels are full of stories of Jesus liberating people from death and disease and teachings about generosity, forgiveness, and loving enemies — an invitation to live in God's new world.
• The Gospel authors constantly appeal to the Hebrew Scriptures, sometimes by direct quotation (e.g., Matthew links Jesus' birth in Bethlehem to the prophet Micah).
• More often they weave biblical phrases into the story without comment. At Jesus' baptism, God's words ("You are my son, my beloved, with you I am well pleased") blend three biblical texts identifying Jesus as the royal son of David, the seed of Abraham, and the suffering servant.

Why There Are Four Accounts

• The diversity is intentional; each author shaped and arranged the stories to emphasize different things about Jesus.
• Matthew presents Jesus as a greater Moses, grouping his teachings into five large blocks like the five books of the Torah.
• Luke highlights Jesus as God's royal servant from Isaiah, bringing God's light to the nations.
• Mark presents Jesus as a new start for humanity, bringing the mystery of God's new creation crashing into the present.
• John focuses on Jesus' claim to be Yahweh, the God of Israel, become human, to do for us what we could never do for ourselves.

The Cross, Resurrection, and Invitation

• All four accounts tell the same basic story of a man from Galilee teaching good news who is ultimately crucified as a criminal.
• The arrival of God's Kingdom led Jesus to the cross, where he was enthroned as King of God's new world — given a robe, a crown, and a scepter.
• As Jesus suffers the consequences of humanity's rebellion, he shows that the power of God's Kingdom comes through love and self-sacrifice; his resurrection is the dawn of the new creation.
• The Gospels don't just want readers to know about the good news but to become part of it — to trust and follow Jesus and participate in the new creation he began.

Notable Quotes

"The time is fulfilled. God's Kingdom has come near, so turn around and trust this good news."

"Every book is constantly showing how all of the biblical stories about Abraham or Moses and David and all the prophets, all of it points forward to Jesus."

"All four books of the Gospel are showing how the arrival of God's Kingdom through Jesus led him up to the cross, where he was enthroned as the King of God's new world."

"The Gospel is designed to persuade us to trust and follow Jesus so that we can participate in the new creation that he began."