The gospel… what is the gospel?

The birth of our Lord Jesus Christ is the beginning of the gospel of God. The word gospel comes from the classical Greek εὐαγγέλιον (euangelion), which has military connotations. It literally means “reward of good tidings.” It was a declaration given by a messenger to announce the positive news of a military victory. In the New Testament, it simply means “good tidings,” which we translate into English as “good news.” In the early Church, it became the word that announced salvation through Jesus Christ and the arrival of the Kingdom of God.

Paul describes the εὐαγγέλιον to the Romans as the gospel of God which he promised through his prophets in the holy scriptures, the gospel about his Son, descended from David according to the flesh, but established as Son of God in power through the resurrection from the dead.

If we were to sum up the meaning of εὐαγγέλιον, we could say this: the gospel is the good news that God’s power to transform death into life has entered the world through the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, conferring this power to believers through their own new birth in baptism.

There are two accounts of the birth of Jesus, one in the Gospel of Matthew, one in the Gospel of Luke. The account in Luke is told from the perspective of Mary, focusing on her call to be Mother of God. The account in Matthew, which was written for Jewish Christians, is told from the perspective of Joseph, who fulfills the Jewish requirement that the Messiah be descended from David. Joseph is a distant but direct descendant of King David, which is why Matthew begins his Gospel with a genealogy.

Jesus comes in the midst of a family, and the first thing he does is place a marriage in crisis. “Good news, your wife is pregnant, and the baby is not yours.” Try that in any marriage and see what happens. Joseph, like anyone would, suspects that Mary has committed adultery. How will he handle this crisis?

The Gospel tells us two things about Joseph. First, Joseph was afraid. He felt that the trust in his relationship with Mary was gone, so how would he be able to trust her again? Second, Joseph was a righteous man who took Jewish law seriously, and so he believed he could not remain with Mary. He decides to end the relationship, but to do so quietly, so as not to ruin her life.

The coming of Jesus in the midst of crisis challenges us to grow in the power of hope. When there is a crisis in relationships, two things can happen. The relationship can be broken, or there can be an opportunity to grow in love by resolving the crisis. God calls Joseph to the latter, to renew his hope in Mary and to consider the situation carefully.

In a crisis, we are quick to become suspicious of others, whether warranted or not. Crisis unsettles us, stirs our emotions, and makes it difficult to decipher truth from fiction. That is why God has to bring clarity to Joseph, and he does so through a dream.

Dreams are not reserved for privileged people in the Bible. God often communicates through dreams, then and now, precisely to wake people up, to break through confusion and bring clarity.

Recent psychological studies on dreams suggest that dreams are the birthplace of insight. During sleep, the body is paralyzed, preventing us from acting on emotion or impulse or our own judgments of what we think is true or not, right or wrong. This creates a safe space for exploration. In dreams, experiences that do not yet make sense can be explored without risk.

As the mind tests new ways of understanding reality, a dream can reorganize  confusing experiences into a single, coherent framework, producing a deep sense of conviction. In other words, dreams can be places where meaning is born and understanding is transformed. There is a reason why there is a universal piece of ancient wisdom that says, “sleep on it.” When I was in seminary, we were told to never make a decision when we were in a moment of crisis, we had to give it time, pray and sleep on it.

It makes sense that God would use our capacity to dream to bring clarity to the highest form of truth, divine revelation. Through dreams, God communicates clarity, hope, and direction. This is what happens with Joseph, leading him to a new confidence.

The gospel challenges us to grow in confidence in the power of God in our lives. Now that Christ has come, we know how powerful God’s love can be. We can be confident that Jesus gives us the power to heal relationships instead of allowing them to be broken, to forgive others, and not to lose hope in times of personal conflict.

In this dream, the Angel of the Lord tells Joseph that the birth of Jesus will be the fulfillment of God’s plan to send a Messiah to liberate his people. The Angel quotes the prophet Isaiah, “The virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and shall name him Emmanuel.” What does that mean? Was this a prophesy about Mary and Jesus? Not exactly.

The sign of the young virgin with child came to King Ahaz at a critical moment in the history of the people of God. Due to corruption, Israel was internally divided between the North and the South (it is always the North and the South, isn’t it), and this division made them vulnerable. The northern kingdom fell and was conquered, and the southern kingdom barely hung in the balance. The king was in a crisis, in need clarity on what to do, in need of hope.

This is when he receives the sign of Emmanuel, but it was not the sign of a cute baby. Imagine your nation is about to lose a war and someone says, “Don’t worry, you’ll receive a cute baby.” Not very helpful!

God appeals to King Ahaz and says, “Ask the Lord your God for a sign, whether in the deepest depths or the highest heights.” God cares about King Ahaz, even though he is a pretty lousy king. God wants him to succeed in his kingly mission. But Ahaz refuses and says “I will not ask. I will not tempt the Lord.” It sounds pious and humble, but it is actually prideful. He is trying to manipulate God while insisting on doing things his own way. He is in a crisis and is not thinking clearly, choosing to ignore God’s invitation.

Isaiah steps in and says, “Listen. You are already putting people at risk, and now you are standing in the way of God’s action. Since you will not ask, the Lord himself will give you a sign… The virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall name him Emmanuel.”

This was not a prophetic message about the birth of Jesus, it was a prophetic message about the power of God’s presence, and the consequences of refusing God’s presence.

The virgin is a symbol of God’s power coming not from human origin, but from heaven. Emmanuel means “God with us.” It reveals a God who respects human freedom, who wants to walk with us on the path of freedom, who is loyal and remains with us, offering us a way to choose the authentic path. But for those who refuse that presence, their choices lead toward being entrapped by their own power or the powers of the world which are often stuck in a cycle of crisis. King Ahaz had just refused Emmanuel, so for him, the sign of Emmanuel was anything but comforting, it was a sign of the negative consequences of his own choices.

Isaiah makes this clear in the verses that follow. “The child shall be living on curds and honey by the time he learns to reject the bad and choose the good. The Lord shall bring on you and your people and your father’s house days worse than any since Ephraim seceded from Judah.” In other words, Judah will also be conquered. The southern kingdom will fall. The child will be eating curds and honey because the Assyrian invasion will devastate the land, destroy agriculture, and leave the people surviving on herding and hunting alone.

The gospel, the birth of Jesus, announces Emmanuel, God is with us. The question I must ask myself is this: am I allowing the power of God to be the leading power in my life, guiding me toward flourishing, or, like King Ahaz, am I too distracted by the networks of power in the world that lead only to competition?

This was the question the Apostle Paul had to face. He refers to the Christians in Rome as the beloved of God. He did not always think this way. At one point, he hated them. He lived a strict life of obedience out of fear of God’s judgment and condemned those who were not as obedient as he was.

Then he encountered the gospel, the risen Christ on the road to Damascus. It was an encounter with the power of Christ’s love that changed his perspective and led him to baptism, to new birth, and to the continuation of the gospel.

That power transformed him. He became able to open himself to others in a new way, even risking death for the salvation of people he once wanted to destroy. It carried him all the way to Rome, where he writes from prison, “This is my prayer for you, that your love may grow more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best.”

Paul proclaims the power of God in the midst of the Roman Empire, which claimed to bring salvation to the world. Calling himself a slave of Jesus Christ, he distinguishes the gospel as the only saving power in the world, and his ministry was key in bringing new order into the Roman world, eventually leading to the transformation of the kingdom of Rome into the Vatican, the Holy See, the visible sign of the Kingdom of Heaven now on earth. 

This is the same power that continues to transform the world in each one of us. As we approach Christmas and recall the birth of Jesus, let us ask the Lord to fill us with his power, to make us witnesses to the gospel of God, and to make the birth of Jesus a time of new life for us and for our world.

So, what is the gospel? In Christ, the gospel is a person. The gospel is you.