The King Jesus Gospel

The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited

Scot McKnight

Zondervan, 2011

Main points:

1. The Gospel is: “declaring the Story of Israel as resolved in the Story of Jesus.” (page 79)
2. The church has lost the gospel having focused primarily on the plan of salvation.
1. The plan of salvation asks, “how we can get saved?”
2. The gospel tells a story into which the plan of salvation fits

Scot does an excellent job of showing how the entire New Testament uses this definition of “gospel” (Paul, Peter, the writers of the gospels and even Jesus).  Based on this Scot calls us back to preaching the gospel not simply salvation.  He believes that our focus on salvation has led us to create a culture where the most important thing is to have made a one time decision to believe in Jesus and have our sins forgiven.  This is not wrong in and of itself, it just isn’t big enough.  We need to create a gospel culture, a culture where the most important thing is Jesus resolving the story of Israel by being declared lord and messiah through his death and resurrection.  We are called to line ourselves up with this story, to become part of this story. 

Scot suggests a few ways that we create a gospel culture.  First, “we have to become People of the Story” (page 153).  We need to know/learn the entire story told in the bible.  Second, “we need to immerse ourselves even more into the Story of Jesus” (page 153).  Third, “we need to see how the apostle’s writings take the Story of Israel and the Story of Jesus into the next generation and into a different culture, and how this generation led all the way to our generation” (page 155).  Fourth, “we need to counter the stories that bracket our story and that reframe our story” (page 157).  Here Scot talks about how we need to counter the powerful stories of our world like individualism, consumerism…

Fifth, “we need to embrace this story so that we are saved and can be transformed by the gospel story” (page 158).