So the gospel can be cast in careful formal language and in everyday informal language. It addresses all of us, and all of us can grasp hold of it at whatever level we choose.

It’s also a broad category — embracing multiple aspects with far-reaching implications and numerous impacts. There’s a comprehensiveness and an immensity to the biblical good news.

Yet all its elements are interlinked, gathered around a central strand, unified by a single person.

In fewest words, the substance boils down to: ‘Jesus is Lord.’

Boiling It Down

The core content of the Christian gospel — declared by Jesus himself, then believed and promoted about him by the first Christians — can be summarised straightforwardly.

In simplest terms, the gospel announces ‘the Christ’ (Acts 8:5). It states ‘the good news about Jesus’ (Acts 8:35). It is ‘proclaiming the Kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ’ (Acts 28:31).

In fewest words, its substance boils down further to a brief declaration: ‘Jesus is Lord’ (Rom 10:9; 1 Cor 12:3), ‘Jesus Christ is Lord’ (2 Cor 4:3-5; Phil 2:11), ‘Jesus Christ our Lord’ (Rom 1:4).

Of ‘first’ and fundamental ‘importance’ regarding the nature of that Lordship is his death for our sins ‘in accordance with the Scriptures,’ his resurrection from the dead (1 Cor 15:3-4), his all-powerful appointment as Son of God (Rom 1:4), and his super-exaltation ‘above every name … in heaven and on earth’ (Phil 2:9-10).

So the ‘essential ingredients’ of the Christian message are, in brief: the Lord Jesus Christ and him crucified, resolving sin by God’s grace, offering forgiveness for guilt, new birth, and eternal life through the gift of the Holy Spirit.¹J. I. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (IVP, 2010 [Orig. 1961]), 66.

The Declaration Contains a Demand

Here’s something easily separated that shouldn’t be.

The declaration of this message includes the demand following from it. An obligation is bound up with it. This message we should believe and express by repentance and faith.

That is the gospel’s consistent focus. That is its constant theme.

Six Things the Word Can Mean

So ‘the gospel’ can refer to a person — our Lord Jesus Christ. To actions and events — his saving work. To their accomplishments, status and ongoing operations — Jesus’ Lordship and Kingdom. To the benefits of those achievements — salvation. To a certain set of written narratives — the canonical Gospels. And to a wider message: a body of news, truths and facts to be communicated, stated, expounded, heard, received, and appropriately responded to.

Moreover, the gospel in the New Testament is set forth in a variety of moods, styles and genres. Narrative and proclamation. Biography and autobiography. Story-like presentation and detailed conceptual analysis. Letters and visions. Facts and interpretation. Events plus message. Persons, ideas, promises, commands.

The good news is a thought-pattern, a framework, a matrix, a worldview, an announcement, an argument, a logic, a summons.

A Pattern You Can Actually Hold

What follows explores a suggestion: that among all the ‘gospel’ material in the Bible it’s possible to trace a five-part pattern — a set of themes and talking points, expressed and taught over and over.

Taken together they form ‘the doctrinal components of the gospel.’²David Wells, Turning to God (Baker Books, 1989 / 2011), 20. They distil, clarify and communicate the common core contents of the Christian good news.

And the exploration will develop gradually, moving from drastically short and simple expression toward greater complexity and length. Five words, then five phrases, five sentences, five paragraphs, five pages — and finally five longer parts containing fuller clarifications.

Five Words

The shape and structure of the gospel, very simply:

1. God
2. Sin
3. Christ
4. Forgiveness
5. Faith

Taken together those offer a clear, uncomplicated, non-technical outline of the gospel’s contents — easily digested, comfortably memorised, and usable without difficulty as a set of headings for fuller explanation.³For comparison, the reader may wish to consult the learnable gospel outlines offered in John Chapman, Know and Tell the Gospel. 4^th edition (Matthias Media, 2005), 150-162.

Five Phrases

By way of expansion, the gospel tells us:

1. About God’s character and relationship to us
2. About sin and its consequences
3. About Christ’s identity and action
4. About salvation, based on forgiveness, issuing in eternal life
5. About conversion, full-hearted faith, life-long trust, and turning to God from sin

Five Sentences

The shape and substance may next be expressed in five theses:

1. The gospel is a totally positive life-changing word from the God who speaks, creates, rules, judges, and saves
2. The gospel includes a warning of judgment to come on sinful humanity
3. The gospel centers on Jesus Christ as Lord by his life, death, resurrection, exaltation, and return
4. The gospel of salvation has immediate impact now through the forgiveness of sins and the creation of new spiritual life in relationship with God, but its strongest stress is on promised outcomes in the eternal future
5. The gospel demands conversion — faith and repentance — in response to God’s grace and mercy⁴These five sentences are partly verbatim and partly developed from Peter Jensen, The Revelation of God (IVP, 2000), 46, 49, 53, 58, and 61.

Notice how the five hold steady as they expand. Same skeleton, more flesh each time. God, sin, Christ, salvation, response — that’s the frame, whether you have five words or five hundred pages to fill it.

Which is worth knowing if you’ve ever felt you couldn’t explain the gospel because you didn’t know enough. You can hold the whole thing in five words. Everything else is elaboration.

—

• 1
  J. I. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (IVP, 2010 [Orig. 1961]), 66. ↩︎
• 2
  David Wells, Turning to God (Baker Books, 1989 / 2011), 20. ↩︎
• 3
  For comparison, the reader may wish to consult the learnable gospel outlines offered in John Chapman, Know and Tell the Gospel. 4^th edition (Matthias Media, 2005), 150-162. ↩︎
• 4
  These five sentences are partly verbatim and partly developed from Peter Jensen, The Revelation of God (IVP, 2000), 46, 49, 53, 58, and 61. ↩︎