By the Way: What is a Gospel?

With the recent hubbub about 'The Gospel of Judas,' it seems like a good time to answer the question: What is a gospel anyway? What do we mean when we call a piece of ancient literature a Gospel?

To answer that, we have to understand the meaning of the word, gospel itself. It's an elision of the Old English term, good spell or God spell (Our English word, good, derives from God. The phrase Good Bye began as a way of telling people God Bless Ye.) Spell was a word for news.

Gospel, then, is good news, specifically the good news about God's free gifts of forgiveness and everlasting life granted to all with faith in Jesus Christ.

The word gospel is a literal translation of the New Testament Greek's term, euangelion, which can be transliterated into English as evangel. (An evangelist then is a good newser, a person who presents to the world the good news of God's love and the free gift of new life offered through Christ.)

Some Biblical passages that summarize the Christian gospel include:

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. (John 3:16)

What made the Jewish faith in the Old Testament unique among the religions of the world was that a relationship with the Almighty or enjoying blessedness was said to have nothing to do with religious works. In Biblical faith, one might do good works, but they always come in response to God's favor, freely granted, not as a ploy to earn God's favor.

A relationship with God was all a matter of God's charity (what the New Testament calls grace). For example, God charitably accepted Abraham's belief or trust in Him and His promises and counted it as the righteousness that a holy God demands. Abraham "believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness," Genesis 15:6 says. (And if you read anything about Abraham in the Old Testament, you know that he was far from perfect. That gives me hope!)

In Jesus Christ, God extended the possibility of rightness with God to Gentiles as well as to Jews.

As was true for the Jews, so for non-Jews: Reconciliation with God is not attainable by doing certain religious deeds or obeying religious laws. None of us is capable of sufficient goodness to measure up to God's standards of moral perfection, anyway.

But the Good News--or the Gospel--is that when we acknowledge our sin, seek forgiveness in Christ's Name, and entrust our past, present, and future in His hands, God reckons us righteous, just as He once did Abraham. This is the point of Romans 3:21-28 (most of which I cited a few days ago in talking about 'The Gospel of Judas'):

But now, irrespective of law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.

Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded. By what law? By that of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.

So what do we mean when we call a book a Gospel? There are four books in the New Testament bearing that designation. They're described that way because in telling about Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, they invite people into a relationship born of God's grace through faith in Jesus Christ. John's explanation of why he wrote his gospel could pass as the mission statement for the other three New Testament gospels as well:

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:30-31)

So, could the Gospel of Judas be considered a gospel? Not really. That document was rooted in the Gnostic notion that some deeper relationship with God was acquired through intellectual attainment--in this case, just another religious hoop or good work--rather than by the amazing grace of God.

[To see my first post on the Gospel of Judas, see here.]