Thinking About the Gospel, Part 2

See Part 1.

The Gospel and Doctrine

The gospel is news. The gospel news is about events that happened in space and time. Those events are two in number: Christ died, and Christ arose again.

The gospel is news, but it is not merely news. It is also an explanation of the significance of the news. Both events of the gospel must be rightly explained in order for the gospel to be the gospel.

Christ did not simply die. He died for our sins. This explanatory phrase opens the whole discussion of substitution and imputation. Anyone who gets the explanation wrong has lost the gospel.

Christ did not simply rise from the dead. His resurrection was not a conjurer’s trick. It carried a meaning and a message. Without the resurrection, both faith and preaching are vain. Without the resurrection, we are yet in our sins, and those who have died in faith are lost. But Christ’s resurrection is the firstfruits of all human resurrection. It implies the bodily resurrection of every human being. Christ recapitulates Adam and reverses bodily death. Furthermore, the resurrection guarantees Christ’s authority to rule. This is how Paul explains the significance of the resurrection in the remainder of 1 Corinthians 15, the definitive passage on the gospel.

Without the correct explanations, the events of the gospel lack both meaning and value. One cannot present the gospel without presenting the correct explanations of the events. This is the main problem with Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ. The movie is a graphic depiction of the horrors of crucifixion. It is designed to evoke a visceral response of revulsion and pity. It completely fails, however, to provide an adequate explanation for Jesus’ sufferings (as well as omitting half the gospel, namely, the bodily resurrection). Viewers may empathize with the tortured man on the cross, but they cannot trust Him as their sin-bearer, for they have no way of knowing that He is.

The explanations are the key to the gospel. Without the explanations, the gospel does not exist. The explanations give God’s perspective on the events, rendering their true meaning and making them applicable by humans. Such theologically centered explanations have a name. They are called doctrines. To say that the explanations are key to the gospel is to say that doctrine is key to the gospel.

This observation leads to an inescapable conclusion, namely, that the gospel is irreducibly doctrinal. Someone may object that the gospel is more than doctrines, and that is true; but if the doctrines of the gospel are removed, the gospel itself vanishes. The gospel may be more than doctrinal, but it is never less.

Others would object that we are saved by trusting Jesus, not by trusting doctrines. Granted, we are saved by trusting Jesus—but which Jesus? Can the Jesus of Arius save us? What about the Jesus who appears in the Gospel of Judas? What of the Mormon Jesus? Clearly, we are not saved by trusting just any Jesus. The moment we begin to specify which Jesus is the object of our trust, however, we are once again uttering doctrines. The only Jesus who can save us is a Jesus who is doctrinally understood. Apart from doctrine, no one has any access whatever to a saving knowledge of Christ.

The gospel is events. Without explanation, however, the events are meaningless. The gospel is also the explanations. And that means that the gospel is doctrine.

If the gospel is doctrine, then which doctrines constitute the gospel? One way of answering this question is to work outwards from the definitive summary of the gospel that Paul gives in 1 Corinthians 15. In this short summary, Paul assumes certain doctrines and necessarily implies others.

The gospel includes the proposition that “Christ died for our sins.” Obviously, this proposition assumes certain truths about human sinfulness. If we were not sinners, then Christ would not have died for our sins. If our sins did not require judgment, then Christ did not need to die for them. If we could have expiated our own sins, then His death would have been appallingly superfluous. If there is no particular time at which Christ will return to judge the quick and the dead, then His death is not for sins. To deny human sinfulness and condemnation is implicitly to deny the gospel itself.

The proposition that “Christ died for our sins” assumes a certain meaning of the word “for.” From other Scriptures we know that the meaning is one of substitution. That Christ died “for” our sins means that He carried our sins in His own body on the tree, that He who knew no sin was made to be sin for us, and that God has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. To deny the vicarious atonement is implicitly to deny the gospel itself.

Furthermore, the proposition that “Christ died for our sins” assumes that He was a qualified sin-bearer. As Scripture makes clear, He had to meet important qualifications for this task. On the one hand, He had to be genuinely human in order to pay for human sin. On the other hand, He had to be capable of bearing an infinite penalty within a finite duration of time—and the only infinite being is God Himself. In other words, a qualified sin-bearer had to be a theanthropic person, a God-man. To deny the full humanity, the full deity, or the unity of the person of Christ is implicitly to deny the gospel itself.

How is a God-man possible? We could never have imagined a way, but God appointed that our sin-bearer would be born of a virgin. From her He receives a human nature; as God He enters the world with a divine nature. The virgin birth is the only way that we know of in which a theanthropic person could exist. To deny the virgin birth is implicitly to deny the gospel itself.

This list could be extended much farther. To be sure, not every doctrine is essential to the gospel. Not even most doctrines are. Because the gospel is doctrine, however, at least some doctrines cannot be denied without implicitly denying the gospel itself.

The gospel is events. Reject the events, and you reject the gospel. The gospel is also explanation. Reject the explanation, and you reject the gospel. The explanations are doctrinal in nature. In other words, the gospel is doctrine. All of the doctrines that are essential to the gospel must be carefully studied, carefully understood, and carefully guarded for the simple reason that the gospel itself is at stake.

His Saviour’s Words, Going to the Cross

Robert Herrick (1591-1674)

Have, have ye no regard, all ye
Who pass this way, to pity me
Who am a man of misery?

A man both bruis’d, and broke, and one
Who suffers not here for mine own
But for my friends’ transgression?

Ah! Sion’s Daughters, do not fear
The Cross, the Cords, the Nails, the Spear,
The Myrrh, the Gall, the Vinegar,

For Christ, your loving Saviour, hath
Drunk up the wine of God’s fierce wrath;
Only, there’s left a little froth,

Less for to taste, than for to show
What bitter cups had been your due,
Had He not drank them up for you.

This essay is by Dr. Kevin T. Bauder, president of Central Baptist Theological Seminary (Plymouth, MN). Not every professor, student, or alumnus of Central Seminary necessarily agrees with every opinion that it expresses.