Gospel Confusion

Ask any three (3) Christians to define the gospel and you will get four (4) different answers. It seems that a term so frequently used and so important to defining our faith would have a more universally accepted definition. Graeme Goldsworthy points out that some confuse the gospel with the proper response to it.

"But it is important to keep the gospel itself clearly distinct from our response to it or from the results of it in our lives and in the world. If our proper response to the gospel message is faith, then we should not make faith part of the gospel itself. It would be absurd to call people to have faith in faith!. . .[W]hat you or I do in response to the gospel is not itself the gospel. You cannot say that repentance and faith are the gospel. They are what the Holy Spirit enables us to do about the gospel." According to Plan, InterVarsity Press, 1991 p. 81,83.

So how do you define the gospel? Goldsworthy defines it in part as follows:

"It [the gospel] deals with the problems that he [God] perceives and defines. It does not primarily deal with our needs as we perceive them - how can I live a better life, overcome my hang-ups, make sense of my existence - although it may include these. The gospel is God's way of dealing with his 'problem' of how he, a holy and just God, can justify and accept the sinner." Id. at 81-82.

Of course, the cross was His complete and perfect solution.