Köstenberger on Five Observations Concerning the Gospel

Andreas Köstenberger has posted the following five observations in answering the question "What is the Gospel?"

1. Divine, not human: The gospel is God’s saving message to a world living in darkness and a humanity lost in its sin.

2. Required, not optional: Acceptance of the gospel is not optional for salvation but rather required, owing to pervasive human sinfulness.

3. Christological, not merely theological: The gospel is not vaguely theological, as if it were amenable to various ways of salvation depending on a person’s belief in a particular kind of god, or depending on the degree to which people were able to hear the gospel presented in a clear way; it is decidedly and concretely Christological, that is, centered on the salvation provided through the vicarious cross-death of the Lord Jesus Christ.

4. No other gospel: The messianic motif pervading all of Scripture and centering in the Lord Jesus Christ coupled with the risen Jesus’ “Great Commission” for his followers to go and disciple the nations inextricably link an understanding of the gospel as the exclusive message of salvation in Jesus Christ with the church’s mandate to engage in missionary outreach.

5. No other name but Jesus: In light of the clear biblical passages mentioned above and in view of the strong and pervasive trajectory of scriptural references to the gospel there is no proper foundation for arguing for salvation apart from explicit faith in Jesus Christ. Scripture makes clear that humanity is universally sinful, and that God’s wrath remains on every individual who has not placed his or her trust in Jesus Christ on the basis of his substitutionary death on the cross and his subsequent resurrection.

Read the entire post here.