Does your “gospel” include the Old Testament?
In the third chapter of The King Jesus Gospel, Scot McKnight says that the ignorance of many Christians about the Old Testament is evidence of how our current gospel culture (see The King Jesus Gospel — Gospel Culture) has suffocated the story of Israel and the story of Jesus.
The story of Israel (also called the story of the Bible by McKnight) is how God chose Abraham, then ancient Israel, and later the Church, to act on God’s behalf for God’s creation (p. 35). The story of Jesus completes or “brings to resolution” the story of Israel (p. 36-37). It is about Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of God – a proclamation that is rooted in the story of Israel’s attempting to embody God’s intentions for them.
So, the “gospel” is more a resolution and completion of Israel’s story than it is a solution to an personal individual sin problem (p. 37). Both the story of Israel and the story of Jesus comprise what McKnight calls “the saving Story” (p. 37). But the “saving Story” is not the same as “the plan of salvation” (how a person is to respond in order to be saved). Rather, the plan of salvation emerges from the story of Israel and of Jesus.
But because the end result of the plan is salvation and not how one who is saved ought to live, it is not the gospel. It is the gospel that results in a Christian life lived in justice, righteousness, and love (p. 40).
Finally, McKnight notes that the methods employed to persuade someone to respond in order to be saved will vary by person, place, and era. Once again, however, what he calls the “Method of Persuasion” is not the gospel (he promises to have more to say about the Method of Persuasion in later chapters).
McKnight wants us to keep the story of Israel and the story of Jesus together as a unit and to keep the Plan of Salvation and Method of Persuasion together as another unit. His concern and contention is that the former has been “crushed . . . under the interpretation of the last two big ideas” and has resulted in a gospel that has lost its edge (p. 44).
All of the this leads to further questions:
- What was the original gospel?
- What was the gospel Jesus preached?
- What is the gospel of the New Testament?
These will be addressed in the next few chapters.
Related Posts:
The King Jesus Gospel – Introduction
The King Jesus Gospel–The Big Question
King Jesus Gospel – Gospel Culture
