In His Letter to the Romans
"... the gospel which I preach ..." (Galatians 2:2)
"Now I make known unto you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you ...' (1 Corinthians 15:1)
"For I made known to you, brethren, as touching the gospel which was preached by me, that it is not after man" (Galatians 1:11)
"The gospel which I preach". "The gospel which was preached by me."
There are in the New Testament four main designations for the basic matter with which it deals, the vital truth with which it is concerned, and those four designations are The Gospel, The Way, The Faith, and The Testimony. That which has now came to be known as "Christianity" was then expressed by one or other of those designations. Of these four, the one used more than any other is the first - The Gospel. That title for the inclusive message of the New Testament occurs there at least one hundred times - that is, in the noun form, 'the Gospel.' In the corresponding verb form it occurs many more times, but unrecognized by us, because it is translated by several different English words. The verb form of this very same Greek word appears in our translation as "to declare", "to preach," "to preach the gospel." It would sound very awkward if you were to give a literal translation to this verb form. It would be just this - 'to gospel,' 'to gospel people,' 'to gospel the kingdom', or, to take the meaning of the word, 'to good-news', 'to good-tidings,' and so on. That sounds very awkward in English, but in Greek that is exactly what was said. When the preached they conceived themselves as 'good-newsing' everything and everybody. To preach the gospel was simply to announce good tidings.
It is impressive that this word, this title, for the Christian faith - 'the gospel' - abounds in twenty of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament. The exceptions are: the Gospel by John, where you will not find it, nor will you find it in the three letters of John. You will not find it in Peter's second letter, nor will you find it in James or Jude. But these writers had their own titles for the same thing. We mentioned among the four, "The Testimony": that is John's peculiar title for the Christian faith - often, with him, "The Testimony of Jesus." With James and Jude it is "The Faith." But you see how preponderating is this title of "the good news", "The Gospel."
The Range of the Term "The Gospel"
So we have to take account quite early of a most important fact. It is that this term, the good news, covers the entire range of the New Testament, and embraces the whole of what the New Testament contains. It is not just those certain truths which relate to the beginning of the Christian life. The gospel is not confined to the truths or doctrines connected with conversion and, in that limited sense, salvation - the initial matter of becoming a Christian. The gospel goes far beyond that. I repeat, it embraces all that the New Testament contains. It is as much the gospel in the profound letters to the Ephesians and the Colossians as it is in the letter to the Romans - perhaps no less profound a document, but often regarded as being mainly connected with the beginnings of the Christian life.
No, this term, the 'good tidings', covers the whole ground of the Christian life from beginning to end. It has a vast and many-sided content, touching every aspect and every phase of the Christian life, of man's relationship to God and God's relationship to men. It is all included in the good tidings. The unsaved need good news, but the saved equally need good news, and they constantly need good news. Christians constantly need some good news, and the New Testament is just full of good news for Christians. The servants of the Lord need good news. They need it as their message, the substance of their message. They need it for their encouragement and support. How much the Lord's servants need good news to encourage them in the work, and support in all the demand and cost of their labors! The Church needs good news for its life, for its growth, for its strength, for its testimony. And so the gospel comes in at every point, touches every phase.
Now as to our present method in the pages which follow. I would ask you to follow me carefully, and to grasp what I am trying to say by way of the foundation of this word. We are going to pursue what I am going to call the 'resultant' method: that is, to elicit the conclusion of the whole matter, rather than the particular aspect of any one portion of the New Testament.
Let me illustrate. Take, for instance, the Letter to the Romans, which we are going to consider in a moment. We all know that that letter is the grand treatise on justification by faith. But justification by faith is shown to be something infinitely greater than most of us have yet grasped or understood, and justification by faith has a very wide connotation and relationship. All that is contained in this letter to the Romans resolves itself into just one glorious issue, and that is why it begins with the statement that what it contains is 'the gospel'. "Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God ... concerning His Son." Now all that follows is 'the gospel' - but what a tremendous gospel i there! And we have somehow to sum it all up in one conclusion. We have to ask ourselves: 'After all, what does result from our reading and our consideration of this wonderful letter?' You see, justification is not the beginning of things, neither is it the end of things. Justification is the meeting point of a vast beginning and a vast end. That is, it is the point at which all the past eternity and all the future eternity are focused. That is what this letter reveals.
The God of Hope
Let us now look at it a little more closely in that particular light. What is the issue, what is the result? That result is gathered up into one word only. It is a great thing when you can get hold of a big document like this and put it into one word. What is the word? Well, you will find it if you turn to the end of the letter. it is significant that it comes at the point where the Apostle is summing up. He has written his letter, and he is now about to close. Here it is:
"Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope" (Romans 15:13).
If your margin is a good one, it will give you references to other occurrences of that word in this same letter. You will find it as early as chapter five, verse 4; you find it again in chapter eight, verses twenty-four and twenty-five; again in chapter twelve, verse twelve; and then in the fifteenth chapter - first in verse four, and finally here in our passage, verse thirteen. "The God of hope." That is the word into which the Apostle gathers the whole of this wonderful letter. This, then, is the gospel of the God of hope; more literally, the 'good news', or the 'good tidings', of the God of hope. So that what is really in view in this letter from start to finish is "Hope."
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 3 - "A Hopeless Situation")
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