James Henley

What is the Gospel?

How would you describe the Gospel?

Every so often I go through a period of noticing people using the term, ‘the Gospel’. Recently I read an article online which used the phrase ‘Gospel fluency’, and asked ‘how fluent are you in the Gospel?’ More often than not, the G in Gospel is capitalised to indicate something important. Sometimes it is used to refer to something general to do with Jesus’ teachings, sometimes to a specific summing up of Jesus’ death and what it achieved.

What is the Gospel? How should it be defined or described?

Here’s some definitions which Google found me:

• the four books in the New Testament (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) that tell the story of Christ’s life and teachings
• an unquestionable truth; “his word was gospel”
• folk music consisting of a genre of a cappella music originating with Black slaves in the United States and featuring call and response; influential on the development of other genres of popular music (especially soul)
• religious doctrine: the written body of teachings of a religious group that are generally accepted by that group
• a doctrine that is believed to be of great importance; “Newton’s writings were gospel for those who followed”
  wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

• A gospel (from Old English, gōd spell “good news”) is a writing that describes the life of Jesus. The word is primarily used to refer to the four canonical gospels: the Gospel of Matthew, Gospel of Mark, Gospel of Luke and Gospel of John, probably written between AD 65 and 110. …
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel

How would you define the Gospel?