Of course, such a statement sets me up for a flood of testimonies that counter my personal observations. Even so, I hold this to be true: very few people can point to a moment-in-time conversion experience. It is indeed the case that some can point to a specific moment that marks their turn to Christ, and it may have even happened at an event designed for that very purpose! But even in such instances, many of them have been left wondering if that moment was all that there is to their faith. Others feel the need to somehow continually get back to that moment (maybe through additional events where the invitation is to “rededicate” oneself to Christ). And for those who have not had such definable moments, this orientation is confusing, particularly because it has become the normative narrative for becoming a Christian in most people’s eyes.

Early in the life of our church community, Jacob’s Well, a group of us met at a neighborhood bagel shop one morning. As we ate bagels and drank coffee, the time somehow turned from casual conversation to the seven gathered telling the stories of their lives and faith journeys. When the last person had shared, someone made the offhand comment that not one person in our group described his or her faith story in conventional conversion terms. No one could point to a moment in time when they were “out,” then “in.” It was a surreal moment because prior to that conversation, each of us had thought something was wrong with our stories. As we continued to talk, we realized that our faith was made up of a series of mini-conversions spaced out over time. In fact, our conversions were less like Paul’s dramatic Damascus Road experience and more like Peter’s plodding and clumsy discovery that the one whom he had been following was the One long promised by God. Our faith seemed to be more of an ongoing and progressive surrender of ourselves to God that was integrally tied to a simultaneous ongoing and progressive revelation of God to us. Our narratives were characterized not so much by a moment in time that we had become Christians (though we had), but by a process of responding over time, more or less, to Jesus’ invitation to join him and participate on this journey.

That conversation in the bagel shop with my friends became an “AHA!” moment for me. But even as it was comforting, it was also unsettling. As evangelicals, we were prepared to examine our methodology and reengineer our methods in order to be more effective in our proclamations of the gospel message. However, our own experiences seemed to reflect that something more than methodology was askew. It’s as if something in our theology was not quite right. Initially, I was not prepared for that. Even so, I began to wonder if it was not just that we were “doing” something wrong, but if something in our very understanding of the gospel itself was off-kilter. If that was the case, then it was scary to contemplate. But if it was true, then it made sense of why everything else in my understanding of the scaffolding of salvation seemed to be wobbling. I needed to know more.

THE ORIGINS OF “GOSPEL”

The word “gospel” is one of the most important words for understanding what God is up to in Christ — and it may be one of the most misunderstood. For many, the word gospel has become a shorthand way of describing God’s action to save human beings from their sin through the atoning death of Jesus Christ on the cross. When people accept by faith Christ’s death as the payment for their personal sin(s), then they are assured eternal life. That basic premise has become a sort of formula that many Christians use to describe and share their faith with other people. Reduced in this way, however, I believe the gospel has become for many nothing more than a ticket to heaven secured by praying the “sinner’s prayer” in response to an “altar call” or some such personal or corporate presentation.

For me, and many of my friends, that is all we ever heard or knew about. Ministry was largely about getting more people to personally believe that faith formula. And I suppose that is good — as far as it goes. But I don’t believe it goes far enough. Why? Because the focus is mostly on sin and the solution for sin: the cross. Don’t misunderstand me. Sin is a problem and the cross is the means by which God deals with it. But that is not all that God is up to in Christ. The Bible talks about gospel and salvation in a far more robust and multi-faceted way than just sin and solution. But most people don’t know that. In fact, most people are surprised to discover that the word “gospel,” or “good news,” originates not with Jesus in the New Testament, but rather with Yahweh in the Old Testament.

One thing I have loved discovering over the last several years is that nearly everything we read in the New Testament has its precedent in the Old Testament. Another way of saying it is that the Old Testament provides a back-story or framing story for all that we encounter in the pages of the New Testament. When we become familiar with those framing stories, we begin to better understand what is happening with Jesus and why he says what he says and does what he does throughout the Gospels. It goes without saying that the Scriptures Jesus interacted with were what we now call the Old Testament. Reading the Gospels, we see that Jesus was intimate with these Scriptures. His fluency and agility began at a young age and continued all through his life and ministry — as did his ability to confound and frustrate the religious authorities who were certain that their understandings and applications were sacrosanct.

The most famous teaching of Jesus is found in Matthew’s Gospel and is called the Sermon on the Mount. Yet this discourse is not new content delivered out of nowhere. Rather, in the sermon we discover Jesus radically reinterpreting Old Testament teachings that Jews already knew, but apparently had not understood. This is why many of the teachings in the Sermon on the Mount contain the refrain, “You have heard it said...but I say to you...” That is but one example. As we read about Jesus and see him going about his mission, we often fail to recognize that both his words and his actions are a constant and continual dialogue with the words, people, and events of the Old Testament Scriptures. While we may miss these cues, we can be sure that his first century audience did not.

“Gospel” is an Old Testament idea. The Greek word euangelion, from which we derive the word gospel, literally means “good news.” In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, the word euangelion first appears. The final section of Isaiah, chapters 40-66, describe what life with God will look like when God’s people, Israel, return from their exile in Babylon. Because of their disobedience to God, Israel came under God’s judgment. That judgment was executed when Babylon, acting as God’s agent, attacked and destroyed Jerusalem and many of the remaining Jews were taken to live as a conquered people in Babylon. It was a humiliating time for Israel and her people. In keeping with Jeremiah’s prophecy though, they were held in captivity for only 70 years. At the end of that time, they returned to rebuild and repopulate their homeland. Isaiah 40:1-5 begins this new chapter in Israel’s life and outlines God’s intent to restore his people to his favor and their land.

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