Good News

When Paul talks about "the gospel", he means "the good news that the crucified and risen Jesus is the Messiah of Israel and therefore the Lord of the world". Now, that's about as brief as you can do it.

The reason that's good news... In the Roman Empire, when a new emperor came to the throne, there'd obviously been a time of uncertainty. Somebody's just died. Is there going to be chaos? Is society going to collapse? Are we going to have pirates ruling the seas? Are we going to have no food to eat? And the good news is, we have an emperor and his name is such and such. So, we're going to have justice and peace and prosperity, and isn't that great?!

Now, of course, most people in the Roman Empire knew that was rubbish because it was just another old jumped-up aristocrat who was going to do the same as the other ones had done. But that was the rhetoric.

Paul slices straight in with the Isaianic message: Good news! God is becoming King and he is doing it through Jesus! And therefore, phew! God's justice, God's peace, God's world is going to be renewed.

And in the middle of that, of course, it's good news for you and me. But that's the derivative from, or the corollary of the good news which is a message about Jesus that has a second-order effect on me and you and us. But the gospel is not itself about you are this sort of a person and this can happen to you. That's the result of the gospel rather than the gospel itself.

It's very clear in Romans. Romans 1:3-4: This is the gospel. It's the message about Jesus Christ descended from David, designated Son of God in power, and then Romans 1:16-17 which says very clearly: "I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God unto salvation." That is, salvation is the result of the gospel, not the centre of the gospel itself.

- N. T. Wright, Interview with Trevin Wax