Is There a "gospel" in the Gospels?

Last week I honored Nijay Gupta, Tara Beth Leach, Matt Bates, and Drew Strait for co-editing the volume, Living the King Jesus Gospel: Discipleship and Ministry Then and Now, a tribute volume to me. I there expressed my deep gratitude to the editors and to each author. Today I begin a series on each essay. One by one straight through the book. It will be fun for me because they are writing about the gospel then and now and seeking to show ways to live it out.

The first section collects essays on the New Testament by NT professors and authors. It’s just so fun for me to sit here and look at the list of names.

Mike Bird’s essay: “Is There Any ‘Gospel’ in the Gospels?”

For years, make that decades, I have been irritated by those who would either actually state/suggest the answer is No but even more by those who colonize the Gospels’ gospel with Pauline categories. Nothing wrong with Paul, but the Gospels are in fact the gospel (too!).

Mike is one of the most stimulating scholars alive today and it doesn’t hurt that he’s got a Renaissance-like competence: he’s got NT cred and systematic theology cred and there aren’t many like that. Plus, no one writes with as much wit and candor. So, here goes.

I love this essay.

He chooses passages and not a comprehensive sketch of each Gospel: Matthew 26-28, Mark 2:1-12, Luke 4:16-30 and John 5:19-29.

Yes, the Gospels contain the gospels.

After an opening mind-bending sketch of how different groups in the church (Latin-western tradition (guilt, justification), Eastern Orthodoxy (death, life, participation in the divine life), Methodists (forgiveness, renewal unto holiness), Pentecostalism (Jesus as Spirit-bearer and Spirit-giver), and liberationists (oppression, divine justice, liberation) and the Reformed (he says they can be too Synod-of-Dort, but his terms for them are apostolic hermeneutics, justification, substitutionary atonement, union with Christ and the Spirit). Quite the sketch.

But so much of so much of this is Pauline and Mike wants to show the Gospels get it done too. His summary works well:

         Matthew 26-28 is the gospel of Jesus as it tells us about his passion and resurrection set against the backdrop of his messianic career and as part of the fulfillment of Israel’s hopes. Also, Mark 2:1-12 is a wonderful vignette that touches on Jesus’ compassion for those suffering, the forgiveness of sins, and his divine authority. Then, Luke 4:16-30 is exemplary for the holistic nature of salvation it sets out in Jesus as liberator, proving that can bring together the radicalness of Martin Luther and the justice-quest of Martin Luther King. Finally, John 5:19-29 is a wonderful amalgam of the main features of John’s Gospel, Jesus as truly divine, the concerted emphasis on faith, a new exodus in Israel’s messiah, and the ‘hour’ of decision confronting his audience.

That says it all.

Here’s the kicker sentence in the essay, one worth tweeting:

         That said, the gospel of Jesus the Nazarene is a justice-bringing, slavery-crushing, illness-healing, debt-remitting, low-status-reversing, sin-cleansing, outsider-including, and truthing-to-power gospel.

That’s Bird in his nest of comfort. Love it.

Mike, thanks so much!