The God of the Gospel

by Benjamin Dean

Contents Outline

THE GOSPEL OF GOD

THE GOD OF THE GOSPEL

The gospel’s focus and flexibility
The gospel’s two top-line teachings about God

THE GOD OF JESUS CHRIST

THE GOSPEL REVEALS THAT THE FUNDAMENTAL REVELATION OF GOD IS JESUS CHRIST

THE GOSPEL IS GOD’S WORD

THE GOD WHO SPEAKS – THE FUNDAMENTAL IMPORTANCE OF THAT SPEECH

THE GOSPEL OF GOD

The good news begins with God. For the gospel’s main message concerns ‘God with us’ in the Lord Jesus Christ ‘to save his people from their sins’ (Matt 1:21, 23). The fundamental focus of the Christian good news regards ‘God incarnate, Jesus of Nazareth, who did for us what we could not do for ourselves, in order to bring us, a lost people, back to God.’¹ So the first great reality of the gospel is God himself. God is where the gospel begins.

In the gospel, we learn that God is for us because he loves us, and, because he is for us, no one and no thing can possibly be against us (John 3:16; Rom 8:31). In the gospel, God gives to us Jesus Christ, who is God and man. The greatest gift of the gospel, the greatest good of the good news, is God’s Son himself (John 3:16). Through the gospel God calls us ‘into the fellowship of his Son’ (1 Cor 1:9). ‘God does not merely give us “something,” but gives himself; and giving us himself, giving us his only Son, he gives us everything.’² ‘He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things’ (Rom 8:32). ‘The love of God’ from which nothing can separate us ‘is in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Rom 8:38).

That being so, the authenticity, integrity, and inner nature of the gospel rests upon its structure and content being entirely God-given. The good news is momentous because it is given to us through the Son of God. It is achieved by God, delivered by God, simply to be received by us from God. And the importance, the appeal, the challenge, the surprise, the power, and above all the truth of the Christian gospel flows from the following: (1) that it comes to us from God; and (2) that it was accomplished and announced first and foremost by Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God.

‘The proper substance or subject of the gospel is Christ ‘in the flesh,’ or the incarnate Christ. For the gospel is entirely occupied with telling about his redeeming work, his satisfaction for our sins, and his other benefits. In this sense is it called “the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God,” i.e., the gospel about Jesus Christ, God’s Son (Mark 1:1; Rom 1:3, 16; 15:19; 1 Cor 9:12; 2 Cor 9:13; Gal 1:7, 11, 12).’³

Thus, the gospel of Jesus Christ and the gospel of God are one and the same. For the good news of Jesus Christ is the good news of ‘God in Christ’ (Eph 4:32), the good news of ‘God in Christ Jesus’ (Rom 6:11; Phil 3:14; 1 Thess 2:14; 5:18), and the good news of ‘God in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Rom 8:39).

So the Biblical good news is not man’s good news (Gal 1:11). Its origin and content are not human but Divine. The Christian gospel does not originally come from Christians. The source of the gospel is the revelation of God (Gal 1:12; cf. 2 Cor 12:3-4), and the substance of the gospel is the saving action of God in Christ. The gospel has authority and power from God because it was accomplished by God’s eternal Son, Jesus Christ. The gospel is true and trustworthy because it was first preached by God’s incarnate Word, Jesus Christ.

‘For in his gospel God declares that he takes no delight in the destruction of any sinner, but he delights in transferring everyone to salvation through repentance and faith from the power of darkness into the kingdom of his beloved Son, Jesus Christ.’⁴

Knowing God – ‘the knowledge of God’ (2 Cor 10:5) – is the gospel’s great business, its overarching objective, its basic purpose, its foremost aim, and its ultimate end. The gospel’s great goal is making God known. For the gospel is the Word of God – the Revelation of God – bringing knowledge of God, and allowing us to see everything in relation to God. In that way, the gospel is God’s means of creating fellowship with him, a fellowship that embraces all of life.

So far, then: God is the gospel’s governing figure and theme, and knowledge of God (which is identical with knowing Christ) is the gospel’s task and intent. In non-formal terms, ‘although Jesus is the centre of the message, he’s not where the story begins. In fact, to understand who Jesus is and what he achieved (especially what his death and resurrection mean) we have to paint in a bit of background. We have to start a little further back. At the very beginning, in fact.’⁵ And the beginning with which the Christian gospel starts is God. God is its initial cause and its underlying reality. In formal terms: ‘The principal efficient cause of the gospel is God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with respect to both the Divine decision to declare it to mankind and the declaration itself.’⁶

It is God who so loved the world that he gave his only Son ‘that the world might be saved through him’ (John 3:16-17). It is the Kingdom of God that Jesus claimed to be ‘the gospel of God’ (Mark 1:14-15). It is God who required his only-begotten Son’s obedience to the point of death upon a cross (cf. Luke 22:42; Phil 2:8). It is God who ‘anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. [So that] he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him’ (Acts 10:38). It is God who raised his Son from death and ‘made him to appear’ (Acts 10:40; 1 Cor 15:15). It is God who ‘has exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every other name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow’ (Phil 2:9-10). It is God who commanded the Apostles ‘to preach to the people and to testify that [Jesus of Nazareth] is the one appointed by God to be the judge of the living and the dead’ (Acts 10:42). It is God whose moral perfection and saving power are revealed in the gospel (Rom 1:16-17). It is God whose determination and decision drove the activity of Paul and the other Apostles (1 Cor 1:1; 2 Cor 1:1; Eph 1:1; Col 1:1; 1 Tim 1:1; 2 Tim 1:1). It is God who appointed them to ‘know his will,’ to be God’s witnesses, declaring ‘to everyone of what [they] had seen and heard’ (Acts 22:14-15).

The matter could be much extended. God is the reason for the gospel. God is the gospel’s foundation. God is the gospel’s object;⁷ and reconciliation – issuing in relationship – with God is the gospel’s goal, for that is what it message reveals and communicates.

God reveals the gospel, and the gospel reveals God. God is the gospel’s greatest good, for the gospel’s content is good news about the person and work of God’s incarnate Son, Jesus Christ. The gospel of God is the gospel concerning his Son (Rom 1:2-3). God is where the good news starts. At the same time, however, the gospel declares the union of God and man in the person of Jesus Christ; and it tells us that God wants and makes relationship with us. It teaches that in Jesus we may receive the forgiveness of sins and adoption as dearly loved children of God through the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit with the goal of enjoying eternal life in fellowship with God.

‘We need to begin by observing, then, that the gospel is not first and foremost about ourselves. It is not a device for getting what we want or need. It is not a technique for self-improvement or self-accomplishment. It is not a means of tapping our own inner resources. It does not offer itself as a tool for thinking positively about ourselves. It is not about ourselves at all, although we are invited to believe its message. It is about Christ. It is about the actions of the triune God as he reaches out to sinners who can neither save themselves nor bow before him in submission apart from the working of his grace (Rom 8:6-8).’⁸

It is no exaggeration then saying that ‘[t]he whole of Scripture is filled with the sense of God’s initiative in salvation.’⁹ As far as the gospel is concerned it is not us but God who is the source and centre of things; although of course the gospel is from God for us.¹⁰ So Calvin: ‘God specially calls by the name “gospel” the message which he commands to be proclaimed about Christ. For in this way he tells us that nowhere else can true and substantial happiness be obtained and that in him we have in perfection all the parts of a blessed life.’¹¹

Thus, the gospel’s first focus is God, and all things in relation to God.¹² For the good news of Jesus Christ introduces us to God. Through its message we come to know God; for the gospel ‘is a means of God’s self-giving.’¹³ For each person, ‘the gospel is our means of contact with the truth about God. … The gospel is the starting point for our eternal life with God. It is the means of becoming reconciled to God so that we have assurance of God’s favor and of the gift of eternal life. It is the means by which we are born again and know the indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit.’¹⁴

As far as the good news is concerned, it is then God’s identity, God’s nature, and God’s activity that is definitive, rather than our understanding or our response, or even our obvious needs, real or felt. The gospel is absolutely not about what we must do for God; it is not even – in the first place – what we say about God. Throughout the Bible, ‘the gift of God is prior to and the basis of [any] task we are given.’¹⁵ But the gospel primarily is what God tells us, about (1) who he is, (2) things he has done, (3) things he isdoing, and (4) things he will do.

From one angle, the good news tells us what God has decided is going to happen to all of us one day, and that there is nothing we can do to alter it. The gospel is God’s way of telling us what the end of the story will be for everyone. Yet the gospel of God has an essentially saving nature. That is why it is good. The good news is what God in Christ tells us about how he has delivered us, is delivering us, and will deliver us from sin and all its horrible consequences – alienation, ruin, wrath, death, and everlasting damnation.

In Jesus’ death and resurrection – as well as in the whole great drama of his conception, birth, life, obedience, teaching, mighty acts, exaltation, and ongoing activity at God’s right hand – the Son and Word of God fulfils the purpose, plan, and promises of God in person. ‘The God who acts in the Old Testament is the God who becomes flesh in the New Testament in order to achieve the definitive saving work in the world.’¹⁶ God’s people are meant to believe, think, speak, behave, and build lives of loyalty and love upon what God has said and done; and the gospel exhibits this pattern precisely, presenting Jesus Christ ‘as the one who fulfils the promises of God by achieving for humankind the salvation that is otherwise beyond our reach.’¹⁷

THE GOD OF THE GOSPEL

All Biblical teaching is connected. So in explaining and summarising any particular aspect of the Bible’s teaching it can be hard getting into one thing without getting into lots of other things.

Here our aim is to consider what the gospel tells us about God. We shall try to do so in distinction from what the entire New Testament and broader Bible teaches about God. We are asking and seeking to answer the following kinds of questions: Who is the God of the gospel? What is he like? What does he want? How does he think, speak, and work?

The gospel is the central unifying theme of the Christian Scriptures. ‘Good news’ is the ‘comprehensive single term … [that] capture[s] the message of the Bible.’¹⁸ Yet to understand what the words ‘God’ and ‘gospel’ mean, we need to be informed by the whole Bible, including the Old Testament,¹⁹ as well as the full Apostolic teaching of the New Testament Epistles and Gospels.²⁰ The Bible directs us to the gospel. The gospel directs us to the Bible. There is a distinction but no tension or separation between Scripture and the gospel. Scripture turns our attention to the gospel; and the gospel points us to Scripture. Indeed, the good news confirms that the written Word is God’s typical way of speaking to human beings publicly, personally, clearly, powerfully, and at considerable length.

The gospel’s focus and flexibility

‘Gospel’ is specialised language; yet it is also an embracing language. ‘Gospel’ vocabulary, messaging, and teaching, has both a particular subject and a comprehensive scope. For orientation, here are some statements from the Leiden Synopsis’ Disputation ‘On the Gospel’:

‘[3] In the sacred writings [i.e., the Bible] the most prominent meaning of the word “Gospel” is: the very blessed and highly welcome message about the saving coming of our Redeemer Jesus Christ. They [that is, the Scriptures] sometimes use the word in a general sense, and other times with specific meaning. [4] When taken in a general sense, the word includes in its scope of meaning the evangelical promise itself about Christ, and the fulfilment of it, as in Gal 3:8, 16. [5] When taken in a specific way, limited to presenting Christ, it means firstly the account of Christ manifested in the flesh, as in Mark 1:1. [6] Secondly, the word is used for the joyful teaching and preaching of the reconciliation of sinful people with God through the free remission [forgiveness] of sins obtained for them by the expiatory death of Christ [‘expiatory’ refers to the removal of guilt]. It is offered to one and all without restriction; it is revealed to the poor in spirit and to little children, and actually applied individually to those who believe, for their salvation and the revelation of God’s mercy and accompanying justice, and for his eternal praise (1 Cor 9:14, 15, etc).’²¹

To repeat: The Bible’s good news is at the same time focussed and flexible.

(1) The gospel’s consistent focus is this: the Lordship of Jesus Christ, by death and resurrection, in all its multiple dimensions.²² Its concentration follows from the person, role, and activity of Christ himself. For the gospel’s core content is exactly him, Jesus of Nazareth, the Divine-human person that he is, his saving deeds in the historical past, his continuing work in the present today, and his ongoing activity in the immediate and ultimate future. Jesus Christ is themessage, to be sure. ‘The proper subject of the gospel is the incarnate Christ, his redeeming work, his satisfaction for our sins, and his other benefits.’²³ ‘Through the gospel we are brought to acknowledge the Lordship of Christ, our need, and his grace to save all who believe in him.’²⁴ Chiefly, the gospel gives to us personal knowledge of Christ, for ‘Christ offers himself to us through the gospel.’²⁵ The heaviest stress of the good news about Jesus’ supremacy is particularly his death on the cross for our sins (his greatest and most costly work), his resurrection, and his continuing Lordship at the right hand of God as Saviour, Prophet, Priest, and King. ‘[A] full-orbed gospel … includes the incarnation, atonement, bodily resurrection, present reign, and forthcoming return of Jesus Christ.’²⁶ ‘The gospel is about both what Christ has done for us in his state of humiliation and what he continues to do in his state of exaltation.’²⁷

‘The proper substance or subject of the gospel is Christ ‘in the flesh,’ or the incarnate Christ. For the gospel is entirely occupied with telling about his redeeming work, his satisfaction for our sins, and his other benefits. In this sense it is called the “the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God,” i.e., the gospel about Jesus Christ, God’s Son (Mark 1:1; Rom 1:3, 16; 15:19; 1 Cor 9:12; 2 Cor 9:13l Gal 1:7, 11-12. In similar fashion it is called “the Word of Christ” (Col 3:16) and “his testimony” (2 Tim 1:8).’²⁸

(2) The gospel’s flexibility flows from its focus. For the Lordship of Jesus Christ – based and built upon his sin-bearing death and death-defeating resurrection – is multi-dimensional, multi-levelled, multi-faceted, all-embracing, comprehensive, irreducibly complex, and of literally infinite significance. The supremacy of Christ through death and resurrection has endless unlimited scope. Its implications are immeasurable. Its impact is open-ended. Its consequences continuing and ceaseless.

To illustrate the point and renew the impression, here again are our five theses in slightly expanded form.²⁹ The Biblical good news regards:

God. The gospel is a totally positive life-changing word from the God who speaks, creates, rules, judges, and saves.
Sin. The gospel includes a warning of judgment to come on sinful humanity, a sinfulness stretching from our first parents, Adam and Eve, to us, and which brought evil disjunction and chaos at all three levels of our relationships: with God, each other, and the rest of material creation around us (Gen 3:1-25).
Christ. The gospel centers on Jesus Christ as Lord by his life, death, resurrection, exaltation, and return.
Forgiveness. The gospel 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. Christ clothed in his gospel, in the forgiveness he holds out to us, is moving us from a fallen creation to new creation (Rom 5:1-21, Rev 21:1-8).
Faith. The gospel demands conversion – faith and repentance – in response to God’s grace and mercy

So, the gospel’s flexibility follows from its fundamental focus, Jesus Christ the Lord, and the all-embracing significance of Christ’s saving dominion and kingdom. The gospel’s flexibility flows from the fact that the essential features of its message about the Lord Jesus are all linked, connected, and bound up with all elements of Biblical teaching as well as all aspects of human being. If the gospel is the Bible’s ‘embracing category,’³⁰ its basic big themes – God, sin, Christ, forgiveness, and faith – encompass, impact, and interact with everything in the Bible as well as everything in human life. To repeat: ‘The proper subject of the gospel is the incarnate Christ, his redeeming work, his satisfaction for our sins, and his other benefits.’³¹ Those benefits are infinite and everlasting. Hence the gospel’s flexibility: its scope is boundless and limitless.

The gospel’s two top-line teachings about God

Now, a full account of Biblical teaching about God would deal with a wide range of matters: God’s identity (who he is), God’s character (what he is like), God’s will (what he wants), and God’s works (how he acts and what he does). And the Bible certainly has much to say about all of these things: God’s being and nature, as well as God’s goals, objectives, intentions, aims, and activities.³²

However, much teaching about God contained in the Bible – for example, God’s eternality, infinity, independence, knowledge of the future, and changelessness – is essential, and assumed or implied in the gospel message, without being the concentration of the gospel. For instance, all of God’s perfections (power, knowledge, independence, beauty, etc) underpin the gospel, and the Biblical good news does not merely assume but communicates the existence and nature of God. But whilst all that the Bible says about God is involved in the gospel, not all that the Bible tells us about God is the dominant subject or message of the gospel.

For example, the identity and character of God is (strictly speaking) not the gospel; but the gospel certainly contains extensive teaching about God’s names and nature. Again, the things Scripture teaches about God’s works of creation and providence are not the gospel; but the gospel includes and incorporates such truths. Creation and providence are part and parcel of the good news, and entirely integral to it; but they are neither its heartbeat nor its essence.

For example, again, the Bible’s God is to be understood as simple – meaning that the various qualities of God’s character are harmonious, and integrated, so that whatever the Biblical God is he is that totally and entirely through and through without conflict or confusion. ‘God is simple in his being. He is all that he is in everything he is.’³³ Thus in Scripture God is absolutely holy, absolutely loving, absolutely just, and absolutely morally perfect, etc., etc.; and this simplicity of God informs and illuminates, say, the gospel’s teaching about the cross of Christ expressing at the same time of God’s holiness and love, judgment and mercy, wrath and grace. ‘In the gospel of the incarnate, crucified, and risen Savior, we are shown God acting freely and fully in perfect accord with his nature.’³⁴ But critical though it is, the simplicity of God is hardly ‘the gospel of God’ (Rom 1:1 etc).

(But, that simplicity gives our Christian faith, our trust in God’s promises about what he has done and is doing for us in Christ, great strength and clarity. The assured outcomes of Christian faith – that Christ’s death and resurrection and ascension have defeated sin, death, and devil (1 Cor 15:50-58; James 4:7) – that strength and breadth and depth of Christian faith do not come from us, but God. Christian faith is entirely different from magic, the belief and activities that we think we can employ to tap into, manipulate, use divine or semi-divine powers to get outcomes we may want, like power, wealth, or the death of people we do not like. The assurance and outcome of our faith in God’s promises come from God himself, his own infinite being, which is absolutely holy, absolutely loving, absolutely just, absolutely morally perfect, and absolutely powerful. For this God, God himself in all his simplicity, has promised and acted and acts to bring about our salvation, our rescue from our pitiable fallen condition, the reversal of the corruption of his original creation by our rebellion and sin, and the bringing in of the new heavens and the new earth, the new creation (Rev 20:11-21:8). The simplicity of God is why the true model of Christian faith is that of a child (Mk 10:13-16).)³⁵

Very well, then what does the gospel tell us about God? Who is the God of the gospel? What is he like? What does he want? How does he act? Exactly what are we to say about him, and where should we start?

Well, we shall suggest in due course that the gospel tells us something like this: that God is the one Lord in Three Persons, who speaks, creates, rules, judges, and saves.³⁶ But for now, we proceed with the suggestion that what the gospel tells us about God begins with two very straightforward top-line assertions: (1) Jesus Christ is Lord; and (2) God is Father.

In what follows we shall consider the New Testament’s broader support for this pair of statements introducing what the gospel tells about God. We can lead off though by observing: first, that every individual document contained in the New Testament elaborates in varying length and detail upon these realities – Jesus the Lord and God the Father; and, second, that every New Testament Letter opens either with the exact phrase ‘from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ’ (Rom 1:7; 1 Cor 1:3; 2 Cor 1:2 etc.), or with some variation of it – for example, ‘the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (2 Cor 1:3; Eph 1:3 etc), or ‘Jesus Christ and God the Father’ (Gal 1:1).

So, whilst the gospel in the New Testament maintains that God is exactly ‘like’ the Lord Jesus, and that God is known and accessible to us exclusively ‘through’ Jesus, it is equally true that through Jesus we know God – first and foremost – to be our Father.³⁷ In the gospel as found in Holy Scripture, the Lordship of Jesus and the Fatherhood of God belong together, and they are inseparable from one another: ‘for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist’ (1 Cor 8:6).

Jesus Christ the Lord and God the Father are two entirely new factors for approaching and knowing God, revealed by the gospel contained in the Bible. In the New Testament message, each expresses an advance, a progression of understanding about God. When these claims originally emerged in the teaching Jesus and the Apostles, they disturbed, and confused many. Yet, these two teachings together totally transform our knowledge and love of God. Their combined impact and effect proved unparalleled and historic. That Jesus is Lord and God is Father, pinpoints God’s identity, confirms God’s goodness and power, and defines God’s relation to us exactly. And like nothing else these two teachings contribute confidence, closeness, and comfort to trust in God. Changing and reshaping the nature of belief in God, the dynamics of faith in God, and the heart of love for God, these combined claims have converted empires, shaped civilizations, shaken history, and touched the lives of billions.

THE GOD OF JESUS CHRIST

In a startling thought, the great French apologist and mathematician Blaise Pascal (1623-62) concluded that ‘without Jesus Christ the world would not exist, for it would either be destroyed or be a hell.’ The passage runs this way:

‘The God of Christians is not a God who is simply the author of mathematical truths, or of the order of the elements; that is the view of heathens. He is not merely a God who exercises his providence over the life and fortunes of men, to bestow on those who worship him a long and happy life. That was the portion of the Jews. But the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of Christians, is a God of love and of comfort, a God who fills the soul and heart of those whom he possesses, a God who makes them conscious of their inward wretchedness, and his infinite mercy, who unites himself to their inmost soul, who fills it with humility and joy, with confidence and love, who renders them incapable of any other end than himself. All who seek God without Jesus Christ, and who rest in nature, either find no light to satisfy them, or come to form for themselves a means of knowing God and serving him without a mediator. Thereby they fall either into atheism, or into deism, two things which the Christian religion abhors almost equally. Without Jesus Christ the world would not exist; for it would necessarily either be destroyed or be a hell.’³⁸

This is the exact perspective of the Biblical good news: Jesus Christ is the gospel’s top line teaching about God. God may be known only through Jesus; and God is known through Jesus alone. For the gospel tells us, first and foremost, about the God of Jesus Christ. The gospel’s ‘foremost use’ is to ‘show Christ.’³⁹ And then, we can know God. ‘All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him’ (Matt 11:27). The identity of God hangs on the identity of Jesus. Knowing God, approaching God, coming to God, the true pathway proceeds through a person – the Lord Jesus Christ – the unique Divine-human person. He, the God-man, is the gospel’s primary personality and figure, the one single individual in and through whom the great God of the universe is to be found, known, and loved. The God of the gospel is ‘the God of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (Eph 1:17).

So the Christian good news tells us who God is in relation to Jesus; and it tells us who God is only in relation to him. The gospel tell us who God is in relation to Christ because it tells us who Christ is in relation to God. He is God himself.⁴⁰ He is God the Son. The gospel tells us that God is Immanuel, God with us, present to us personally, only in and through the God-man, Jesus Christ. Because it is God himself who is present to us and reveals himself to us in Jesus Christ, to seek to know God by some other route – through philosophy or other religions – is to go behind God’s back. Which disrespects God, who in his love and mercy has revealed himself truly and directly to us in his Son. For Christ is God the Son incarnate, God in human flesh, God in human form, God as a human being; ‘adding humanity to his Divinity, not divesting himself of Divinity by his humanity.’⁴¹ This shows us that God is the kind of God who can and did assume and take on human nature, ‘yet without sin’ (Heb 4:15).

Over time, Biblical teaching about the Person of Jesus was more fully and formally expressed as involving four essential elements:

He is truly God (The Council of Nicaea, A. D. 325)
He is truly human (The Council of Constantinople, A. D. 381)
He is one Person (The Council of Ephesus, A. D. 431)
He has two natures (The Council of Chalcedon, A. D. 451)⁴²

The first thing that the good news tells us then – the gospel’s top-line teaching about God – is that Jesus Christ himself is truly and fully God.

Now, the New Testament Scriptures indicate Christ’s Divinity or ‘Godness’ in a variety of ways.⁴³ Jesus shares in:

the name of God
the attributes of God
the deeds of God
the honor of God, and
the rule of God⁴⁴

The opening words of Mark’s Gospel (1:1-3) identify ‘Jesus Christ, the Son of God’ as kurios, ‘the Lord,’⁴⁵ the word used in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures for God’s special name YHWH (I Am Who I AM, Exod 3:14 etc). In the rest of the New Testament, Jesus is called ‘Lord,’ more than one hundred times. In terms of sheer extent, this is most basic to its presentation of Jesus’ Deity.

Seven times, at least, Jesus is directly said to be theos, ‘God’. ‘Although direct application [of the word theos] is not the only way of explicitly indicating the Divinity of Jesus, it is obviously a very powerful way.’⁴⁶ The seven statements are these:

John 1:1 ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’
John 1:18 ‘No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.’
John 20:28 ‘Thomas answered him [the risen Jesus], “My Lord and my God!”’
Romans 9:5 ‘To them [the Jews] belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.’
Titus 2:13 ‘waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ.’
Hebrews 1:8 ‘But of the Son he says, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, the sceptre of uprightness is the sceptre of your Kingdom.’
2Peter 1:1 ‘Simeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ.’⁴⁷

A further sample of New Testament statements declare Jesus Christ to be:

Immanuel, God with us (Matt 1:23; cf. Isa 7:14; 8:8)
the Son of God (Mark 1:1; Eph 1:13-14)
the Word of God (John 1:1-18)
Pre-existent ‘in the beginning with God’ (John 1:1-2)⁴⁸
The Lamb of God (John 1:29, 36; cf. Rev 5:6 etc)
God’s Messiah (John 1:41; 4:25); Servant (Phil 2:5-11); and Saviour (Matt 1:21; Luke 1:47; John 4:42)
the Image and Fullness of God in Bodily Form (Col 1:15, 19, 21)
‘the one Mediator between God and men’ (1 Tim 2:5; cf. Heb 7:22-8:6; 9:15; 12:24)
‘Lord of lords and King of kings’ (Rev 17:14; cf. 19:16)⁴⁹

That the New Testament good news does teach the Deity of Jesus Christ is beyond reasonable doubt; and we shall present fuller detail in the proper place.⁵⁰ But in brief compass here, the ‘Jesus’ of the Biblical gospel was ‘sent into the world’ by God (John 10:36; cf. 3:34; 6:29; 8:42; 17:3), lived, taught, acted, healed, died for our sins, rose from death, rules the universe, mediates for us now at God’s right hand, and will come again ‘to be judge of the living and the dead’ (Acts 10:42; also 2 Tim 4:1). Not only does Christ do the things that God uniquely does – including creating everything (John 1:3), forgiving sins (Matt 9:2, 5-6), providing Divine instruction (Matt 5:22; 7:11), delivering people from evil (Gal 1:4), raising the dead (John 6:39-54; 11:25), upholding and ruling the cosmos (Heb 1:3), finally judging all nations and individuals (Matt 25:32), as well as regenerating and renovating the whole universe in the new world (Matt 19:28). Not only is Christ said to bear ‘the radiance of the glory of God,’ but also to be ‘the exact imprint of his nature’ (Heb 1:3). Not only is Christ claimed to be ‘the form [morphē] of God,’ but also is ‘equal [isa] with God’ (Phil 2:6). Not only do the disciples and the writers of the New Testament address and describe Christ as God, but God himself addresses Christ as ‘God’ and ‘Lord’ (Heb 1:8, 10). And this Jesus Christ is, purely and simply, ‘the Son’ (everywhere, for example, in John’s Gospel and Hebrews chapter 1). That is, Jesus Christ is God ‘the Son,’ revealing and leading to ‘God the Father’ (Matt 11:27; John 14:6).

When asking what ‘the gospel of God’ tells us about God we can begin, then, by recognizing that the God of the gospel introduces ‘the gospel of his Son,’ Jesus Christ (Rom 1:1, 9). The Nicene Creed conveys it this way: ‘One Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, of one being with the Father, by whom all things were made. Who for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man.’⁵¹ As the famous Christmas hymn more briefly has it: ‘He came down to earth from heaven, who is God and Lord of all.’⁵²

So, the God of the Christian good news is the God of Jesus. Yet is equally the case that the God of Jesus is the God of the whole Bible. That is, the God of Jesus and the God of the gospel refer to the God of both the Old and of the New Testaments. Whilst the good news marks an advance, promotes a progression and development, in the revelation of God from Old to New Testament, it permits no divorce between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament. ‘The Jewish cradle of Christianity is essential, not incidental, to its being.’⁵³ Everywhere and always, whether in the four written Gospels, the Book of Acts, or the New Testament Letters, the Apostolic preaching of the gospel drew on the substance of Old Testament Scriptures – the already existing written word of God – for its content (Luke 24:44; John 5:46-47; Acts 10:43; Rom 1:1-3).⁵⁴ The character and attributes of the God of the New Testament gospel are the same as the character and attributes of the God of the Old Testament. In the gospel, ‘Jesus is presented not as a God alongside the God of Israel, but rather as properly included in the Divine identity of the God of Israel.’⁵⁵

‘For … Christ did not establish some new manner of calling upon God, but one that conforms to the one used in the Old Testament, one that had actually been ordered by God in a general way … And Christ, when he willed to be acknowledged and called upon as true God did not prescribe a new worship of God, but the one expressed in the first commandment. For in it God … wills him to be worshipped who is one and the same with God himself. And all Scripture bears witness that such a one is Christ – not only regarding his authority … but also regarding his Divine nature.’⁵⁶

The continuation, however, involves an evolution, an advancement, and a considerable clarification. Whilst there is deepest continuity between Old and New Testament teaching about God, that continuity involves an expansion and extension through the addition of, and (to begin with, at least), astonishing and alarming new ingredients. Nonetheless, as the Apostles put it, the God of the gospel, the God of Jesus Christ, is ‘the God of our fathers’ (Acts 3:13; 5:30; 22:14; 24:14).

‘The early preachers were convinced that they had not changed their religion but that they continued to serve the God of their fathers, the God of the Old Testament, though they were now commissioned to proclaim the news about God’s actions in sending the Messiah, raising him from the dead after crucifixion … and exalting him to the right hand of power as judge.’⁵⁷

The presentation of God in the Gospels and other New Testament writings against their Old Testament background witnesses to who Christ is in relation to God, who God is in relation to Christ, and so to what God has savingly accomplished and revealed to us in and through Christ the God-man. ‘The foundation and beginning of confidence in God is, then, the knowledge of him in Christ.’⁵⁸ This is Robert Doyle:

‘In all their exposition of the fulfilment of the Old Testament expectations – for the salvation of Israel, the world, and the cosmos – the New Testament writers continued to declare that “God is One” (Mk 12:9, 1 Tim 2:5; cf. Deut 6:4). Yet a change has occurred. Throughout his mission Jesus calls God “Father” in such a way that he could regard himself as a unique Son (John 10:17), with whom he is also seen to have an eternal relationship (John 1:1; 17:24). … Yet, the writers show no sign of feeling that the basic understanding of God’s “Oneness” has somehow been disturbed by these changes. On the contrary, the unity of God is not only acknowledged in the event of Jesus Christ but expressed in a threefold formula: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Cor 13:14; cf. Matt 3:13-17; 28:19). Finally, our salvation consists in knowing this God and none other: “And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3; cf. 6:25-29; 14:6). So, then, in order to honour him, we have to know and understand this God as he has revealed himself. That duty, and privilege, is ours as it was the first disciples.’⁵⁹

THE GOSPEL REVEALS THAT THE FUNDAMENTAL REVELATION OF GOD IS JESUS CHRIST

Everywhere in the Bible, God is knowable, and God is known because (and only because) he is pleased to give such knowledge to us. There are words – of blessing, command, warning, and promise. There are names – for example, ‘Lord,’ ‘Yahweh,’ ‘Almighty,’ ‘Savior,’ ‘Jesus,’ ‘Christ,’ ‘Father,’ and ‘Holy Spirit.’ There are descriptions – for instance, goodness, justice, power, wisdom, faithfulness, righteousness, and love. There are actions – communicating, creating, ruling, judging, saving – and explanations of those actions. There are stories and histories – recounting significant persons as well as sayings and events and chains of events, in meaningful order. There are statements and facts – things known and claimed to be real and true based on substantial evidence, historical data, and eye-witness testimony. There are writings – Scriptures – the written Word of God, which is the direct work of God himself, inspired and composed by God through the service of Prophets and Apostles, whose reports and writings provide the permanent record in published textual form of special Divine revelation. And the overall goal is to bring knowledge – of God himself, and indeed also about us as unique individuals, particular persons, physical, spiritual, ‘soul-ish’ beings, each with an unceasing destiny bearing God’s image, in relationship to God and one other, for limitless responsibility and enjoyment.⁶⁰

The gospel of Jesus embraces all this. As breaking news from God, the gospel is an act of God in revelation, a message which comes from God, a word and/or a collection of words spoken and authored by God, giving definitive knowledge of God. The good news involves and integrates each of these things: words, names, descriptions, actions, explanations, stories, histories, persons, deeds, statements, facts, claims, speeches, and writings. Their urgency and importance press upon us with the energy, impact, immediacy, and grip that God himself wants to generate. Its purpose is the creation and restoration of fellowship – that is, interpersonal relationship – between God and human beings. Thus, the Christian message carries life-transforming power, that delivers us from sin and all its results, through producing the kind of relational and personal knowledge that leads to eternal life.

As the written and preached gospel makes known the character and identity of God⁶¹ it takes in the whole scope of history (Acts 13:16-41; 14:15-17; 17:22-31). The heart of its message is what God has accomplished through Jesus Christ, by death and resurrection. Yet its core claim regards the universal Lordship of Jesus. Hundreds of New Testament passages present Christ’s absolute supremacy as the gospel’s central concern. Jesus’ Lordship includes his full Deity, Pre-existence, and Creatorship (John 1:1-3; 1 Cor 8:6; Heb 1:2-3). Jesus’ Lordship is both cosmic and eternal, comprised of a Kingdom ranging across all realms of reality. His dominion reaches every part of space, ruling every moment of time, reigning over every element and entity in heaven and on earth, spiritual and physical, rational, and material. And fundamentally, that dominion is for our salvation. Jesus has come to us in our rebellious blindness and hatred of God to show us our true condition and to give us true light and life.

John 1:1-5 – ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.’

It is at this point then that the written and proclaimed gospel teaches us that Jesus Christ is himself, fundamentally and determinately, the revelation of God.⁶² God himself, in the Person of his incarnate Son, has revealed himself to us. The radical nature of this needs to be appreciated. Generally, we tend to think of a divinity or divinities being revealed by a secondary, if important, process. Islam, for example, says that the Koran is the revelation of God, and for that reason its Arabic language cannot really be translated into other languages and still be termed “revelation.” In contrast, the Christian Scriptures teach us that God has truly revealed himself, in the Person of his incarnate Son. Further, as John Calvin so acutely pointed out, we know no Christ except ‘Christ clad with his own promises,’ ‘clothed with his gospel,’⁶³ that is, the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.

Scripture teaches us that God is his Word. And not just that God is faithful to his word, keeps his promises, though that is true; but that the very being of God is Word. And that Word has come to us and reveals the true nature and intentions of God. In receiving that revelation, we not only ‘hear’ with our ears or ‘read’ with our minds, but have a direct, not indirect, relationship with God himself in his own being. We now may truly call upon him as he is in himself, Father, and truly be related to him as his children.⁶⁴ As we will see further in considering the Person and work of the Holy Spirit, in Christ our mediated relationship with God is not secondary or at a distance but is direct and real. By grace, in Christ, we are not metaphorically children of God, but really are so.

We come to this conclusion – that God’s revelation is Jesus Christ, that Jesus of Nazareth is God’s Word to us, revealing who God is, and in that revelation saving us – by considering these teachings of Scripture:

John 1:1 – ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’ The Apostle John is teaching us that the written and preached gospel is not an email dispatched at a distance from us by an impersonal ‘AI’ heavenly member of staff! It is God our Father speaking directly and personally to us in and through his Son incarnate, Jesus Christ of Nazareth. ‘And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us’ (v 14). The last verse of John’s introduction sums it up: ‘No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known’ (John 1:18; NIV).

But ‘Word’ here does not just refer to the words God is speaking to us, the direct and intimate disclosure of who he is and what he is doing with the coming of Jesus. In verses 1-4, the ‘beginning’ John refers to is the act of creation. God was present there before creation, he did it all, by his Word. ‘In the beginning was the Word (v 1).’ The last part of verse 1 stresses that this ‘Word’ is God himself: ‘The Word was God.’ Here, in the Greek original, the past tense (‘was’) of the verb to be ‘expresses continuous timeless existence.’⁶⁵ That is, the Word is God himself. Further, especially in the light of our sinful blindness, in 1:4-18 John is emphasizing that this Word, Jesus Christ, comes to us as God’s self-revelation, which enlightens us, reveals to us who God is (our Creator and Father) and who we truly are (blind sinners needing salvation, needing enlightenment).

Hebrews chapter 1 makes the same point. It is the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who is not only God himself, but God’s revelation to us:

‘Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power’ (Heb 1:1-3).

And that this Jesus Christ, the Son of God who has made ‘purification for [our] sins’ and ‘sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high’ (Heb 1:3), is really ‘the exact imprint’ of God’s nature, really is God himself, is stressed in the rest of the chapter where three times the author quotes passages from the Old Testament where God, Yahweh, addresses his Son, Jesus Christ, as God, as truly and fully divine. And, this Word, the Son of God, himself God, is God’s speech to us: ‘God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son’ (Heb 1:1-2).

So, in summary, what does God through his incarnate Son, ‘Christ clothed with his gospel,’ reveal to us? Through resurrection and ascension, Jesus Christ ‘has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him’ (1 Pet 3:22). Having joined God the Father on his throne (Rev 3:21), Christ’s focus is to steadily destroy all enemies, evil, and opposition to God’s purpose and truth (Acts 2:34-35), and eventually transfer his totally victorious realm to God the Father (1 Cor 15:23-28). And it is of capital importance to recognize that his right to rule all others is determined by kindness and shaped by pity.⁶⁶ The rule of Christ is a saving rule. Although Christ’s Kingdom saves through judgment, the character of his sovereignty is gracious. Jesus’ sovereignty seeks reconciliation between God and man based on forgiveness. The deeds and words and works of Jesus the Lord are designed to rescue and to liberate and to perfect. ‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners’ (1 Tim 1:15).

So, the supremacy of Christ announced in the gospel seeks and accomplishes salvation – God’s saving action – based and built on the Savior’s death and resurrection. And that salvation means that God knows us, and in that we know God. Salvation means that we now call God Father, and he calls us his children. And in this, as our Lord and mediator at the right hand of the Father, Jesus Christis our elder brother (Heb 2:11-13, 17-18).

The Lord Jesus Christ is then the Bible’s primary personality; and the news about Jesus Christ the Lord – the message to do with his Kingdom and reign, originally declared by him and later taught about him – is the main message of Biblical revelation. Of all the Bible’s great truths, the gospel is its greatest truth, its most massive claim, its most monumental assertion. In that way, then, Christ clothed with his gospel is therefore the ABC’s of Biblical teaching, ‘the starting-point for knowing God … the fundamental revelation.’⁶⁷ The good news of ‘God in Christ’ (Eph 4:23), its teaching about Jesus’ supreme Person and work on our behalf ‘for our sins’ (1 Cor 15:3; Gal 1:4; 1 John 2:2; 4:10) comprises the basic revelation of God. The gospel of Jesus, Christ clothed with his gospel, is God’s prime written and preached revelation, which reaches out and embraces and gives meaning to all of Scripture, and in that way, to life.

‘The Christian gospel is the fundamental revelation of God. It affirms that the knowledge of God is the goal of human existence and comes preeminently through Jesus Christ (John 17:3). The gospel is preached in words, as the Word of God (Rom 10:14-17). In turn, it depends for its authenticity and its full explication on the whole Bible understood as God’s Word. God’s scriptural promises are fulfilled in the recognition that Jesus is the long-expected Christ (2 Cor 1:20).’⁶⁸

So, the gospel of Jesus is good news above all because in it we hear from God, and through it we encounter God, meet God, and know God in him. ‘[T]he gospel is God’s account of his saving activity in Jesus the Messiah, in which, by Jesus’ death and resurrection, he atones for sin and brings new creation.’⁶⁹ In the gospel, God reveals Christ’s provision of our unending need: ‘Whoever drinks of the water that I give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life’ (John 4:14).

Fundamentally, although the good news, the gospel in the Scriptures of both the Old and New Testaments are written by human agency, the gospel belongs to God. It is God’s idea, God’s initiative, and God’s instrument. As we have seen from the Gospel of John and Hebrews, in that preaching and teaching God in Person makes himself present to us. Through that preaching and teaching God distributes his best answers to humanity’s biggest questions. The gospel offers God’s lasting solutions to humanity’s deepest problems; it communicates God’s definitive resolutions of the eternal issues facing all individuals. As such, it contains and remains the most astonishing and colossal information, as well as the most positive, good-willed, and valuable information anyone ever receives. And in receiving that information, in trusting his promises, we receive God himself. Because the gospel is a matchlessly generous, favorable, and effective word from God in a world of harm, horrors, and hurt it is precious beyond price.

The gospel tells of God’s intervention in the grand sweep of history, in Person. This intervention is interceptive, whether in the special history of the Jews (Acts 13:16-23) or the general religious quest (Acts 14:14-18; 17:23-28). In the main historical events of Christ’s career – birth, life, teachings, healings, exorcisms, death, resurrection, and ascension – God heads off and puts an end to otherwise terrible and inevitable consequences. Although Scripture does not often put it like that, the good news does indeed involve a ‘rescue.’

The original events upon which the written and preached gospel is based – Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection – split history in two, marking the end of one age and the beginning of a new epoch. This new era is directed, deliberately and surely, toward a certain historical conclusion. Despite the death of individuals and the decay of the cosmos, the Christian good news promises endless ultimate victory and cast-iron eternal security. That victorious conclusion is God dwelling with us, and we being his people. When ‘God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away’ (Rev 21:2-4).

Another way of putting it is to say that the gospel of Jesus, the Word of God, contained in Scripture has a fixed material status. This is not unexpected. God who has created all things by and for his Word, is the source of all being and meaning. The coming of God’s Word to restore the creation which has alienated itself from its Creator by sin, means that the gospel of that Divine movement is unwaveringly all embracive. Its status is fixed, firm, and definite, because the good news blends the world of facts with the realm of ideas, and above all, the world of relationships. The gospel – Christ clothed with his promises – embraces all things, material and spiritual. It connects dateable Divine events with definite Divine concepts. As we read it in Scripture we see that the preached and written gospel integrates information, evidence, commentary upon that information and evidence, and interpretation of it. The gospel links the Person and deeds of God with words from God; it bridges decisive moments of Divine action with definitive statements of Divine revelation. This is the revelation in which God the Father in and through his Son incarnate restores to us the relationship which we are meant to have with him, and he with us, as his true, redeemed children.

An additional way of expressing it is to say that, because the gospel concerns the permanent and eternal implications of things that demonstrably happened in space-time history – God coming to us in person in Jesus Christ of Nazareth – it is irreversibly real and true. The gospel’s combination of reported historical happenings – past events which are (by definition) unchangeable and unalterable – with authoritative explanation of those events gives concreteness and weight to the reality and truth of their meaning and implications. Being empirically real and historically true, God’s gospel reveals the one and only Divine-human individual – Jesus Christ – who is reality and truth (cf. John 14:6), who is the revelation of God himself, in Person.

THE GOSPEL IS GOD’S WORD

The gospel is God’s Word. Or, more precisely, the written and preached gospel is God’s Word about his Word.

‘For us human beings, “God is but his word,” in the sense that our whole relationship with God … is shaped by [his] words. All true worship is response to the word.’⁷⁰

According to Scripture, everything that happens in creation and salvation occurs because God speaks, in person. The written and preached gospel – of repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ – is itself a word from God, himself, in person. The written and preached gospel is God’s Word about his Word.

In the good news about his Son, it is God our Father speaking directly and personally to us. And to remind ourselves, this Son is God’s Word. The eternal Son who came to us clothed in our humanity in the land of Judah some 2000 years ago is God’s personal Word in two ways.

First, he is the Word of the Father. In the Triune Being of God, the Father is what he is, and knows himself as he is, in and through his Son. To express it in slightly impersonal terms, the Son, who is the Word of God, is the rationality of God himself, God’s own self-knowledge which constitutes his Divine Being, as Father.

Second, as we have already noted in the previous section, the Son is the fully Divine Word, through whom God has directly created the universe and given meaning to all things in his creation. And further, through the incarnation of that Word – his coming, life, death, resurrection, and present heavenly rule – God has overturned the original creation we have fatally marred by our sin. It is the Word of God who is bringing in the new creation. And at the heart of that new creation, its summit, God himself in Christ is our light and life, in whom the Father deals with us directly in person; and we as redeemed persons, now properly in the image of God, call upon him as Father.

John 1:9-18 – ‘. . . The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. . . . No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.’

Revelation 21:1-4 – ‘Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

Revelation 21:22-23 – ‘And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb.’

Revelation 22:17 – ‘The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.’

The message and content of the written and preached Gospel is therefore the word of God. As ‘the gospel of God,’ the good news is God’s speech – what God has to say – ‘concerning his Son’ (Rom 1:1-2).

The whole broad Biblical revelation of God is focused on and summed up by what God does and says in Christ. ‘God … has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom he created the world’ (Heb 1:1-2). It is quite understandable therefore that Jesus himself is called the actual Word of God (John 1:1).⁷¹

The exact phrase ‘the word of God’ does not appear in the Old Testament; there the characteristic expression is ‘the word of the LORD’ (Gen 15:1 onward). Yet in the New Testament, both expressions – ‘the word of the Lord’ and ‘the word of God’ – are identified with the gospel.

The precise phrase ‘the word of God’ seems to have come from Jesus himself (Matt 15:6; Mark 7:13; Luke 8:11, 21; 11:28; cf. Matt 4:4; Luke 3:2); and in various places the New Testament deliberately presents ‘the gospel’in terms of, and as equivalent to, ‘the word of the Lord’ (Acts 8:25; 1 Thess 1:5, 8), and indeed ‘the gospel of God’ is thought synonymous with ‘the word of God’ (1 Thess 2:2, 8-9, 13 twice). One statement brings them together: ‘You have been born again,’ the Apostle Peter wrote, ‘through the living and abiding word of God … [Now] the word of the Lord remains forever. And this word is the good news that was preached to you’ (1 Pet 1:23, 25).

Now, the gospel is ‘more than words, but not less.’⁷² It is comprised of Divine Persons, purposes, actions, experiences, and events, plus important information about them and their enduring impact. Through the gospel we are given ‘access to Jesus Christ and his great acts on our behalf; it is a fact that it promises union with Christ and salvation through him.’⁷³

Again, ‘The gospel is preached in words, as the Word of God (Rom 10:14-17).’⁷⁴ The gospel is God’s definitive word. The gospel is ‘a verbal communication … a verbal occurrence … a properly verbal entity.’⁷⁵ It tells of ‘the one great Divine action … the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus,’⁷⁶ and unfolds its limitless implications. The gospel comes to us as a message from God, in Person (Jesus Christ), Christ clothed with his promises, through the pages of Scripture (the only totally reliable, true, and trustworthy written source of our information and knowledge about the God of Jesus), as proclaimed by the church. The gospel assumes God’s prior revelation, and it extends and concludes that revelation of God involving ‘one who makes himself known by words.’⁷⁷ The gospel brings to us a genuine verbal Divine revelation, an unveiling of God through his own speech, from his own Word, the Son, who has spoken and continues to speak to us through the prophets and Apostles, the writers of the books of both the Old and New Testaments. It is an overwhelmingly positive spoken Word from the infinite-personal God, who communicates, creates, rules, judges, and saves.

‘[A]ccording to Scripture, God reveals himself to men both by exercising power for them and by teaching truth to them. The two activities are not antithetical, but complementary. Indeed, the Biblical position is that the mighty acts of God are not revelation to man at all, except in so far as they are accompanied by words to explain them. Leave man to guess God’s mind and purpose, and he will guess it wrong; he can know it only by being told it. … This being so, the inspiring of the authoritative exposition of his redemptive acts in history [i.e., the Bible] ought to be seen as itself one of those redemptive acts, as necessary a link in the chain of his saving purposes as any of the events with which the exposition deals.

The need for verbal revelation appears most clearly when we consider the Person and work of Christ. His life and death was the clearest and fullest revelation of God that ever was or could be made. Yet it could never have been understood without explanation. Whoever could have guessed, without being told, that the man Jesus was God incarnate, that he had created the world in which he was crucified, that by dying a criminal’s death he put away the sins of mankind, and now, though gone from our sight, he lives forever to bring penitent sinners to his Father? And who can come to faith in Christ if he knows none of this?’⁷⁸

The gospel, therefore, involves both redemptive actions by God and revelatory words from God about those actions. It is essentially (though not exclusively) verbal as well as personal – God speaking in Person.⁷⁹ In the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, God’s saving deeds and events are bound up with explanation – a verbal communication – concerning their meaning and significance. In the gospel God does things for us and talks to us too, telling us about what he has done, speaking about their saving implications. In the gospel, ‘salvation is [both] accomplished and explained; the understanding follows the achieving. God shows and tells, speaking forth the meaning inherent in what he does.’⁸⁰

THE GOD WHO SPEAKS – THE FUNDAMENTAL IMPORTANCE OF THAT SPEECH

A trademark feature of the Bible’s God – who created everything, and who reveals himself definitively in the gospel of Jesus Christ – is that he is a speaking God.⁸¹

In fact, the Bible starts and finishes with God saying things (Gen 1:1-30; Rev 21:5-8). ‘From the beginning … God is revealed as a God of words.’⁸² God created the heavens and the earth by speaking: ‘God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light’ (Gen 1:1, 3). God keeps the world in being through his word (Psa 119:89). God talked to Adam and Eve (Gen 1:28), to Cain (Gen 4:6), to Noah (Gen 6:13), to the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Gen 12:1; 26:2; 31:3), to Moses (Exod 3:4-22), from the mountain (Exo 20:1; Deut 4:12), and through the prophets (Jer 10:5; Dan 9:6; Hos 12:10). Indeed, Scripture provides a record of God being the original language-user, the first speaker. Furthermore, Scripture also portrays God as a supreme teacher, instructor, author, writer, publisher, and distributor. But certainly, in the Bible, God is the first communicator, using words to address human beings in all kinds of forms: sentences, statements, assertions, blessings, laws, commands, covenants, questions, descriptions, propositions, promises, narratives, stories, proverbs, parables, letters, and prophecies.

‘[T]he God who is described in Scripture is the God of speech, of promise and command. Revelatory theories that do not account for this are in grave danger of distorting the Christian doctrine of God. … Divine speech reveals the truth about God, as the one who never lies, who is righteous and trustworthy, who keeps his covenantal promises, and whose law reveals his holiness. Not surprisingly, humans are invited to know God through faith, since this is the appropriate response to the one who speaks. We receive his promises and keep his commands by trusting him.’⁸³

God’s Word, whether spoken or written, comes from God, is about God, and about humanity in relation to God. Because in Scripture we live in a God-based world, so too we live in a Word-based world. Words appear as the medium of personal relationships. Speaking is an essential part of what it means for God to be personal and relational. For human beings, made in God’s image and likeness, articulated speech is also baked-in to our being personal and relational creatures. God is communicative; so are we.

Throughout Scripture the reality, power, and effect of God’s words is obvious and unmistakable. What God says is utterly integral to achieving his goals and objectives (Isa 55:11). It is within this broad overall context of God’s communications – expression, revelation, and action through speech – that the Lord Jesus Christ is said to be the Word of God in human form (John 1:1-18; 1 John 1:1-4; Rev 19:13). The eternal Word of God through whom all things were created, came into the world, added humanity to his Divinity, assumed ‘flesh and dwelt among us … full of grace and truth’ (John 1:1-2, 9-10, 14).

To reiterate, Jesus Christ is God’s Word in person. Sent by God from God, ‘he utters the words of God’ (John 3:34). Christ is the One man who is truly God, through whom God has spoken, and through whom God continues to speak to us, to save us from sin and all its terrible effects. The incarnate Son and Word of God made, and continues to make, God the Father known, using the words he was, and still is, supplied by the Father:

‘I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you. For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me’ (John 17:6-8).

Again, the opening words of the Letter to the Hebrews pulls these thoughts together: ‘Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world’ (Heb 1:1-2).

The speaking God makes his saving ways and will most completely known by speaking through his Son. Jesus Christ, ‘the incarnate Word comes to us clothed in words. Even his deeds … are now – and indeed were in his lifetime after the event – accessible only verbally.’⁸⁴ That is, the only Divinely authorized account of the things Jesus said during his earthly life way back when reach us today through the written report of them contained in the New Testament. ‘It is notable that there is no physical description of Jesus in the Gospels: he comes to us clothed in the words of Scripture. We have no other access to him.’⁸⁵ To repeat the insight of Calvin, we know no Christ except Christ clothed with his gospel, the Scriptures of the New Testament which embrace and explain and fulfil the Old.

Again, what God says to human beings, he says to men, women, and children whom he has made in his image and likeness. ‘Because God is the Creator, he has the right to judge and the power to save, and possesses and uses the capacity of speech.’⁸⁶ God is more than able to communicate clearly and successfully with his human creatures using words, verbally, engaging their own created capacities of listening, hearing, writing, reading, understanding, and explanation. The clarity – i.e., the understandability – of what God says when he addresses people rests upon such foundations. To say that God speaks is to suppose that he gets his message across clearly and effectively. At much risk of understatement, the Almighty Creator is an extremely articulate and effective communicator.⁸⁷ He is There, and He is Not Silent.⁸⁸

Words play a fundamental role in God’s ways with the world generally, and with the good news of his saving work particularly. From the outset (Genesis chapter 1), God’s speech – what God says – determines his relationship to the world. The words God speaks are creative and generative – speaking is how he creates, generates, and gives life. God calls all things – speaks all things – into existence out of nothing: ‘the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible’ (Heb 11:3).⁸⁹

God’s Word in all its forms (spoken, written, incarnate, preached, taught) is therefore categorical for all his creatures, especially his human ones. Another way of expressing this is to say that words are a completely basic built-in way that God relates to us. They are critical in two regards:

(1) Language is integral to how God reveals and makes himself known to us. How God communicates with us is Word-based and Word-rich. At one point, Jesus said that ‘Whoever has seen me has seen the Father’ (John 14:10). Yet note that Jesus said this. He made the statement about seeing God the Father using words. And indeed, God and Jesus, reveal themselves now to sinful human beings, not (first and foremost) by making themselves seen but by making themselves heard and understood. Telling us things by speaking to us using language that we can comprehend is inherent in God creating fellowship, establishing contact, connections, communion, relationships, with individuals and with groups of people. Talking, verbalizing, using words, deploying language is fundamental to God’s communication with human beings; indeed ‘it is perhaps the most significant form of his presence.’⁹⁰

(2) Words are also the God-given way human beings (a) respond to God, by talking to him, and (b) communicate with one another about God, by talking to each other about him, and our relation to him.⁹¹ The point is this: in relating to human beings God speaks to us, and considers what we say in reply; and in relating to God, human beings created in his likeness respond by listening and speaking words, both to God, and to one another about God.

‘In sum, the Bible not only presents us with a picture of God’s relationship to creation and to his people in which words are an absolutely crucial means of his presence and revelation, and are, by obvious implication, completely adequate for such purposes; it also shows us that words are a vital means of communicating the message of God from person to person. Moses preached; Elijah preached; the prophets, major and minor, preached; Christ preached; and Paul preached. Words are clearly the main means of so doing. Thus, any theology that claims to take the Bible as its authority must take the teaching of the Bible about words, and indeed the verbal form of the Bible itself, with utmost seriousness and thus see words as a normative and normal part of Christianity.’⁹²

To repeat: words play a fundamental role in God’s ways with the world generally, and so with the good news of his saving work in Jesus Christ particularly. The gospel’s nature is determined by the word-based, word-shaped, word-determined works of God, in creation, revelation, and salvation. At the final endpoint, too, it is words God speaks that establish the perfect world: ‘And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true”’ (Rev 21:5). What God says to us in and by his Word at all junctures shapes and defines both his relation to us and our knowledge of him. Reality – human and Divine – is linguistically structured, determined by speech because God is Word (John 1:1-18). Words are essential to God, and words make us human.⁹³

The good news is news from God, and is the coming of God himself, in Christ clothed with his gospel. Although people are to preach and teach the good news, the message they are to share is not, first of all, some heightened human message. Its claims about Jesus’ identity and action and the knowledge of God such claims generate are first of all ‘a revelatory gift, an unveiling to us, rather than the product of human ingenuity or effort.’⁹⁴ The gospel is God’s Word; before it becomes ours to tell, it is Divine speech. ‘[P]reached in words as the Word of God,’⁹⁵ its content involves a series of assertions, propositions, statements that are Divinely derived. It is a verbal communication, a logos – a reason, or set of reasons – from the lips of Almighty God. ‘The revelation is not [merely] “Jesus Christ” but “Jesus is the Christ.” It is a revelatory proposition.’⁹⁶ It is a message from the speaking God, who creates and restores interpersonal relationship – fellowship – with sinful human creatures by way of words.

The gospel centrally concerns the incarnation and activity of the Word of God, Jesus Christ. ‘Only clear verbal statements of the matter can bring the message home and frame the matter in such a way that responses can then be either those of faith or of unbelief.’⁹⁷ Only ‘the word of the cross’ – the good news of Christ crucified and risen – carries and contains ‘the power of God’ to those ‘who are being saved’ (1 Cor 1:18; cf. verse 21).

—

1
Graeme Goldsworthy, Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture: The Application of Biblical Theology to Expository Preaching (Inter-Varsity Press, 2000), 5; italics supplied.
2
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 2.1 (T&T Clark, 1957), 276; slightly amended.
3
Synopsis of a Purer Theology, 2 Volumes [hereafter abbreviated, Leiden Synopsis], 22:19, ed. William den Boer and Riemer A. Faber, trans. Riemer A. Faber (Davenant Press, 2023), 240.
4
Leiden Synopsis, 22:25, 241; emphasis supplied.
5
Tony Payne, The Christian Gospel (Matthias Media, 2022), 10.
6
Leiden Synopsis, 22:7, 238-39; slightly amended. The Synopsis continues: ‘[8] Regarding the decree God is the efficient cause, because this mystery of the gospel was hidden with God before all ages according to the eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord, as the Apostle teaches in Eph 3:9, 10, and 11. Whence also the gospel is called ‘eternal’ (Rev 14:6). [9] Regarding the declaration of the gospel God is the efficient cause, because this action of God, since it occurs toward the outside, is an action that is not divided among the Trinity. And so the gospel is sometimes called “the word and power of God” in an absolute sense, as in Romans 1:16 and 1 Pet 1:23. Sometimes it is used in a relative sense for the First Person of the Godhead, “the gospel of God,” namely of the Father (Rom 1:1), or of the Second Person, “the gospel of Christ” (as in 2 Cor 9:13), or of the Third Person, the “administration of the Spirit” (as in 2 Cor 3:6). [10] But with regard to the order in which the Divine Persons come together for that action in the different ways that they cooperate, the declaration of the gospel is ascribed in different respects to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. [11] For it is ascribed to the Father as the foremost author of the gospel, since it is from his bosom [breast, side, heart] that it is said to have proceeded (John 1:18). It is ascribed to the Son as the most trustworthy ambassador of the Father, who earnestly declares that the words he brings forward are not his own but those of his Father (John 14:10, 24). And it is ascribed to the Holy Spirit as the most closely related interpreter of the Son’s words, since Christ says that the Spirit would declare nothing new to the Apostles, but that he would announce the same things that they had heard from himself (John 16:13, 14)’ [slightly amended].
7
That is, ‘God in his absolute being … [accompanied] by those acts in which of his charity God sets himself in relation to other beings as their first cause and final end’ (John Webster, God Without Measure: Working Papers in Christian Theology (T&T Clark, 2016), 1:214).
8
David F. Wells, Turning to God: Reclaiming Christian Conversion as Unique, Necessary, and Supernatural (Baker Books, 1989/2012), 168.
9
Goldsworthy, Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture, 5; slightly amended. ‘This primacy of grace, which is at work all the way through the Old Testament, points us to the centrality and primacy of the gospel of grace in the New Testament.’
10
D. Broughton Knox, Selected Works,3 Volumes(Matthias Media, 2000-2006), 3:9-11. At greater length, see John Piper, God is the Gospel: Meditations on God’s Love as the Gift of Himself (Crossway, 2005).
11
John Calvin, The Gospel According to St. John. 1-10, trans. T. H. L. Parker (Saint Andrew Press, 1959), 5.
12
‘We start with God. … There is a sense in which this [and every] doctrine is first and foremost a doctrine about God and how he acts in a perfect expression of his being and character. … Christian soteriology [teaching about salvation] is enclosed and undergirded by the Christian doctrine of God while not being simply another element of that doctrine’ (Mark Thompson, ‘The Theology of Justification By Faith,’ in Barrett, The Doctrine on Which the Church Stands of Falls, page number to be supplied).
13
Peter F. Jensen, The Life of Faith: An Introduction to Christian Doctrine (Matthias Media, 2022), 93.
14
Goldsworthy, Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture, 5.
15
Goldsworthy, Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture, 6.
16
Goldsworthy, Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture, 6.
17
Goldsworthy, Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture, 6.
18
Dane C. Ortland, ‘Gospel,’ in Dictionary of the New Testament Use of the Old Testament [hereafter abbreviated, DNTUOT], eds. G. K. Beale, D. A. Carson et al(Baker Academic, 2023), 272. Cf. Jensen, The Life of Faith, 57ff, 66, 75-76.
19
A good treatment of how the Old Testament’s gospel of global deliverance and restoration (Isaiah 40-66) informs the New Testament’s understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ is Ortland, ‘Gospel,’ DNTUOT, 272-276.
20
We use capital G ‘Gospel/Gospels’ referring to the first four books of the New Testament (i.e., the Gospel according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), with the small g ‘gospel’ referring to the Bible’s main teaching and overall message. On ‘Why Four Gospels?’ see B. B. Warfield, Selected Shorter Writings 2 (P&R, 1973), 639-642.
21
Leiden Synopsis, 22:3-6, 238; slightly amended.
22
Thanks to Robert Doyle for articulation here.
23
Leiden Synopsis, 22:19, 237, 240.
24
Goldsworthy, Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture, 5.
25
John Calvin, The Gospel According to St. John. 1-10, trans. T. H. L. Parker (Saint Andrew Press, 1959), 18.
26
J. I. Packer, The Heritage of Anglican Theology (Crossway, 2022).
27
Brandon Crowe, Lord Jesus Christ: The Biblical Doctrine of the Person and Work of Christ (Lexham, 2023), 313.
28
Leiden Synopsis, 22:19, 240.
29
For fuller definition, see Benjamin Dean, Great Truths – The Gospel of Jesus Christ: An Introduction, ‘Five Ingredients,’ available at https://www.greattruthsglobal.org/the-gospel-of-jesus-christ/.
30
D. A. Carson, ‘The Gospel of Jesus Christ (1 Cor 15:1–19).’ A sermon preached at The Gospel Coalition conference in Deerfield, Illinois, on May 23, 2007, with text, audio, and video, available at https://www.christianity.com/newsletters/features/eight-summarizing-words-on-the-gospel-11597936.html [accessed 220212].
31
Carson, ‘The Gospel of Jesus Christ (1 Cor 15:1-19).’
32
Scriptural teaching about God’s being, nature, and activity is often organized within headings such as ‘Trinity’ and ‘Attributes,’ or ‘God’ and ‘God’s works.’
33
Sinclair B. Ferguson, Some Pastors and Teachers (Banner of Truth, 2017), 544.
34
Mark D. Thompson, ‘The Theology of Justification By Faith,’ in Matthew Barrett ed., The Doctrine on Which the Church Stands of Falls, page number to be supplied.
35
Thanks to Rob Doyle for help developing this point.
36
Adapting the wording of Peter F. Jensen, who in one place (The Life of Faith, 93-94) writes that the gospel’s ‘very essence shows us that God is the one Lord in three persons, who speaks,’ and in another place says that ‘the gospel is a word from the God who speaks, creates, judges, and saves’ (The Revelation of God (IVP, 2000), 46).
37
‘Shifting the question from whether Jesus was like God to whether God is “like Jesus” becomes not only a valid argument for God’s existence, but even more pointedly it elucidates the character of God. Because Jesus was loving, kind, and wise, we know that God is. Where some might imagine God to be vindictive, cruel, and uncaring, Jesus reveals the opposite. As Archimedes said in days of old, “Give me a place to stand, and I can move the entire earth.” For the … believer, Jesus Christ becomes a solid point of certitude, turning the world back to God’s love and presence’ (D. Elton Trueblood; no reference).
38
Blaise Pascal, Pensées [Thoughts], §556, trans. W. F. Trotter (public domain); slightly amended. On the universal significance of Jesus Christ, refer to Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 4 Volumes, ed. John Bolt(Baker Academic, 2003-2008), 3:470-71. Also see Douglas Groothuis, Beyond the Wager: The Christian Brilliance of Blaise Pascal (IVP, 2024).
39
Leiden Synopsis, 22:56, 245.
40
The technical theological term is autotheos (Greek autos, ‘self’ or ‘same,’ and theos, ‘God’).
41
Hilary of Poitiers, On the Trinity, 11.4; Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2.9:214-15.
42
See Fred Sanders, ‘Christ and the Trinity,’ available at https://youtu.be/jJZNeLjK4IY?si=7uq6DAoN9JjXhUt3 [accessed 240813]. ‘[T]he Word begotten of God before all ages, and ever dwelling with the Father, became man. Here are two chief articles of belief: First, in Christ two natures are united in one person in such a way that one and the same Christ is true God and man. Secondly, the unity of his person does not prevent his natures from remaining distinct, so that the Divinity retains whatever is proper to it and the humanity likewise has separately what belongs to it’ (Calvin, St. John. 1-10, 20).
43
On the various ways the New Testament teaches the Divinity of Jesus Christ, see Robert M. Bowman and J. Ed Komoszewski, Putting Jesus in His Place: The Case for the Deity of Christ (Kregel Publications, 2007).
44
Bowman and Komoszewski, Putting Jesus in His Place, passim.
45
The exact Greek in Mark 1:3 is tēn odon kurion, ‘the way of [the] Lord.’
46
Robert C. Doyle, ‘Using the Bible: The Biblical Frame and Explicit Statements.’ An unpublished lecture.
47
Thanks to Robert C. Doyle for setting this out in ‘Using the Bible,’ guided in turn by the work of Murray J. Harris, Jesus as God: The New Testament Use of Theos in Reference to Jesus (Baker, 1992), 271-73, and 274 n. 2.
48
‘In the beginning was the Word. In this prologue he [the author] declares Christ’s eternal Divinity, to teach us that he [Christ] is the eternal God, manifest in the flesh’ (John Calvin, The Gospel According to St. John. 1-10, trans. T. H. L. Parker (Saint Andrew Press, 1959), 7).
49
See the theses in Daniel J. Treier, Lord Jesus Christ (Zondervan Academic, 2023), 46-47. Other excellent recent comprehensive studies include Crowe, Lord Jesus Christ; and three titles by Stephen J. Wellum, The Person of Christ: An Introduction (Crossway, 2021); Christ Alone: The Uniqueness of Christ as Savior (Zondervan, 2016); and God the Son Incarnate: The Doctrine of Christ (Crossway, 2016).
50
See Benjamin Dean, Great Truths – The Gospel of Jesus Christ: Part 3; forthcoming at greattruthsglobal.org.
51
Chad Van Dixhoorn, Creeds, Confessions, and Catechisms: A Reader’s Edition (Crossway, 2022), 17; the alternative translation used there is ‘being of one substance with the Father.’
52
First line, second verse, of ‘Once in Royal David’s City,’ written in 1848 by Cecil Frances Alexander, and later set to music by Henry Gauntlett.
53
Peter F. Jensen, ‘God and the Bible,’ in D. A. Carson ed., The Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures (Apollos, 2016), 481.
54
See Ortland, ‘Gospel,’ in DNTUOT.
55
M. M. Thompson, ‘God,’ in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, Second Edition, ed. Joel B. Green (InterVarsity Press, 2013), 327; building on the work of Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel (Eerdmans, 2008).
56
Leiden Synopsis, 22:39-40, 243.
57
Broughton Knox, Selected Works, 3:11.
58
John Calvin, Catechism of the Church of Geneva [1545], Q 14; trans. Elijah Waterman (Sheldon & Goodwin, 1815), 11.
59
Doyle, ‘Using the Bible,’ 6; slightly amended. ‘Likewise in this development, the way the “Spirit of God” is spoken of adds to Divinity the characteristic of a separate person that can be addressed as a “who” alongside the “who” of Jesus and the Father (John 14:15-17, 25-26; Acts 5:3, 4; Rom 8:16, 26ff; Eph 5:30).’
60
For fuller discussion, see Benjamin Dean, Great Truths – The Nature of Revelation, available at https://www.greattruthsglobal.org/the-nature-of-revelation/.
61
Fred Sanders, The Triune God (Zondervan, 2016), 68.
62
Thanks are due to Robert C. Doyle for much help with the development of the following paragraphs.
63
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion,2.9.3 and 3.2.6, ed. F. L. Battles, 426 and 548.
64
As discussed elsewhere, we are arguing that ‘Father’ does not just refer only to the Person of God the Father but to the very Being of God. We must recognise that the Son proceeds not only from the ‘Person’ of the Father, but from the ‘Being’ of the Father in which the Son and the Holy Spirit each share. ‘Father’ refers to the whole of God, to God’s very Being. For Biblical arguments, see T. F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God, 137-141, 157-159, 204-221.
65
Cleon L. Rogers Jr. and Cleon L. Rogers III, The New Linguistic and Exegetical Key to the Greek New Testament, Accordance electronic ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998), paragraph 15260.
66
‘The impelling cause whereby God within himself moves to declare the gospel is God’s unrestricted mercy and goodwill with which he purposed to embrace the wretched human race that had fallen into sin by the guilt of Adam’ (Leiden Synopsis, 22:12, 239).
67
Jensen, Revelation of God, 63; italics supplied.
68
Peter F. Jensen, ‘Revelation,’ in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (hereafter abbreviated EDT), ed. Daniel J. Treier (Baker, 2017), 747.
69
Simon Gathercole, ‘The gospel of Paul and the gospel of the Kingdom,’ in Chris Green ed., God’s Power to Save: One Gospel for a Complex World? (Apollos, 2006) 149; emphasis supplied.
70
Peter Jensen, ‘Editorial,’ The Global Anglican, 135/1 (2021): 3-9, 3; citing William Tyndale.
71
‘Prophets speak God’s Word; Jesus is the Word of God (John 1:1-3). In this extraordinary identification John assures us that in Jesus Christ we encounter God himself. As his gospel then makes clear, Jesus is the Son of the Father, sent to manifest the Father in word and deed and to draw sinners into the fellowship of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit (John 10:30; 14:8-11, 15-24). Jesus is the Word of God, he appeals to existing words of God, and he himself speaks God’s Word; to separate him from his own words is to divide and reject his revelation. Furthermore, in the appointment of his Apostles he provides for the ongoing revelation of God’s Word inspired by the Spirit of God (John 14:26; 17:17-19). It is notable that there is no physical description of Jesus in the Gospels: he comes to us clothed in the words of Scripture. We have no other access to him’ (Jensen, ‘Revelation,’ EDT, 748).
72
Sanders, The Triune God, 68. According to Simon Gathercole, ‘The gospel is not the events themselves, but the report of the events’ (‘The gospel of Paul and the gospel of the Kingdom,’ 144). More extensively, see Simon Gathercole, The Gospel and the Gospels: Christian Proclamation and Early Jesus Books (Eerdmans, 2022).
73
Jensen, Revelation of God, 46. More broadly on the relationship between human language and Divine revelation, see Jensen, The Revelation of God, 46-49.
74
Jensen, ‘Revelation,’ EDT, 747.
75
No reference.
76
Sanders, The Triune God, 66.
77
Jensen, Revelation of God, 46.
78
J. I. Packer, “Fundamentalism” and the Word of God (Inter-Varsity Press/Eerdmans, 1958), 92.
79
Sanders, The Triune God, 66.
80
Sanders, The Triune God, 68.
81
Initially guided by Mark D. Thompson, ‘The Speaking God,’ in The Doctrine of Scripture: A Short Introduction (Crossway, 2021), 61-86; and Carl R. Trueman, Crisis of Confidence: Reclaiming the Historic Faith in a Culture Consumed With Individualism and Identity (Crossway, 2024), 37-46. More briefly, see also Mark D. Thompson, ‘What is the Bible?,’ in NIV Proclamation Bible, ed. Lee Gatiss (Hodder & Stoughton, 2013), xxi-xxvi. Other good short-ish discussions of the nature of Scripture include Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged (Baker, 2010), 1.5:73-81, 90-110; idem, Our Reasonable Faith (Eerdmans, 1958), 95-115; Gerald Bray, God is Love (Crossway, 2012), 29-66; Paul Helm, Just Words? (Evangelical Press, 2019); Michael C. Horton, Pilgrim Theology (Zondervan, 2011), 51-72; Jensen, Life of Faith, 37-78; Heinrich Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics (Wakeman, 2000), 12-42; John MacArthur, Biblical Doctrine (Crossway, 2017), 69-142; Bruce Milne, Know the Truth, Second Edition(IVP, 1998), 39-66; J. I. Packer, Concise Theology (Tyndale House, 1993), 13-18; R. C. Sproul, Essential Truths of the Christian Faith (Tyndale House, 1992), 15-30. Good longer treatments include Joel R. Beeke, Reformed Systematic Theology, Volume 1 (Crossway, 2019); Richard Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 2, Second Edition (Baker, 2003); D. A. Carson ed., The Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures (Apollos, 2016); Jensen, Revelation of God, 145-230.
82
Jensen, ‘Revelation,’ 747.
83
Jensen, ‘Revelation,’ 747-48.
84
Jensen, Revelation of God, 48.
85
Jensen, ‘Revelation,’ EDT, 748.
86
Jensen, Revelation of God, 47.
87
Particularly good treatments of this theme are several works by Mark D. Thompson: A Clear and Present Word: The Clarity of Scripture (Apollos, 2006); ‘The Generous Gift of a Gracious Father,’ in D. A. Carson ed., The Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures (Apollos, 2016), 615-644; and The Doctrine of Scripture, 119-141.
88
Francis A. Schaeffer (Tyndale House Publishers, 1972).
89
For fuller discussion, see Benjamin Dean, Great Truths – The Creation of the Universe, available at https://www.greattruthsglobal.org/the-creation-of-the-universe/
90
Trueman, Crisis of Confidence, 41.
91
Trueman, Crisis of Confidence, 43.
92
Trueman, Crisis of Confidence, 45-46.
93
Cf. Walter Stephens, How Writing Made Us Human, 3000 BCE to Now (John Hopkins University, 2023), opening chapter, and Part II, especially chapters 5 & 6.
94
Jensen, ‘Revelation,’ EDT, 747.
95
Jensen, ‘Revelation,’ EDT, 747.
96
Jensen, ‘Revelation,’ EDT, 748.
97
Trueman, Crisis of Confidence, 45.

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