Preaching Good News

Brian Zahnd on preaching the gospel of Jesus.

It’s very eye-opening to realize that in all the evangelistic sermons found in the book of Acts, none of them makes an appeal to afterlife issues. Not one. If preaching the gospel is telling people how to avoid an afterlife hell, the apostles in Acts did not preach the gospel! Peter and Paul were not preaching a gospel of “how to go to heaven and not hell when you die.” Their gospel was the audacious announcement that the world has a new Lord, a new King, a new emperor: the crucified and risen Jesus of Nazareth. Their invitation was to believe this joyful announcement, turn from the destructive ways of sin, and be baptised into the new world where Jesus is Lord. They preached that those who responded to this gospel by faith and baptism were forgiven of their sins and made citizens of Christ’s new kingdom… Their gospel was about the arrival of the kingdom of Christ here and now, and about the hope of resurrection in the age to come. The apostles preached a gospel that had no emphasis on the fate of departed souls.

The truth is the gospel is the joyful proclamation that the kingdom God has arrived with the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The gospel is the audacious announcement that Jesus is Lord and that the world is to now be configured around his gracious rule. The gospel is the beautiful story of how God is bringing the world out of bondage to and death through the triumph of Jesus Christ. If you don’t know how to preach the gospel without making appeals to afterlife issues, you don’t know how to preach the gospel.