Glorious Paths

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What’s in a name?

 

The phrase, “The Gospel of Jesus Christ” is probably one you’ve heard before. For me it conjures up images of preachers at pulpits or collar-wearing priests and it sounds very churchy and religious. It’s a phrase that gets used in interesting ways, as if this “Gospel” is a physical thing that you can “share” with someone or “take” somewhere; people either receive or reject it much like they can do with medicines or free samples of perfume. 

But have you ever stopped to ponder what that phrase really means? It is one of the most philosophically and theologically dense sets of words I’ve ever encountered. Let’s expand it a bit and explore what it actually means:

 

Gospel literally means “good news”. That’s a very straight-forward and accurate definition so we can just as easily talk about “The Good News of Jesus Christ” and it means the exact same thing. This is actually a pretty key concept because you can’t do news; you can’t work at it, practice it, or obey it…it’s just news. The idea of sharing news or taking it somewhere simply means informing someone of something that has happened. You can believe or disbelieve this news, and you can live differently in light of it, but news is news regardless of what you choose to do in response to it. Also, it’s The good news, meaning not just any news but a very specific bit of news that has to do with this guy named Jesus Christ.

 

“The Gospel of Jesus Christ” = “The Good News of Jesus Christ”

 

  Except “Jesus Christ” is not a first and last name like John Smith or Benedict Cumberbach. “Christ” is the Greek translation of the word “Messiah” and it’s a title, not a name. So now we’ve stretched it out to “The Good News of Jesus the Messiah,” and if you want to talk about theologically dense terms you can’t get more dense than the title “Messiah.” 

 

“The Gospel of Jesus Christ” = “The Good News of Jesus the Messiah”

Messiah literally means “Anointed One” and it refers to being specially chosen by God for a specific task. In the Old Testament, prophets, priests, and kings were all anointed with olive oil when they were appointed to their God-ordained roles. This was a symbolic picture of God’s Spirit filling and equipping them for their respective tasks. Prophets spoke on God’s behalf, bringing God’s messages to the people; priests interceded for the people, offering sacrifices and serving in the Temple; and kings ruled the people, protecting them, enforcing the law and keeping the peace. Over the years many prophets began speaking about a special Anointed One, God’s chosen servant who would come and rescue the people from tyranny and usher in a new kingdom in which he himself would serve as Prophet, Priest, and King. 

All of this imagery and more is packed into that one little word “Christ”, so it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expand our phrase to: “The Good News concerning Jesus, the One specially chosen by God and anointed as prophet, priest, and king.” But that’s quite a mouthful so let’s just stick with the literal definition of Christ as “Anointed One” or “Chosen One.” The Good news is that Jesus is God’s Anointed One. 

 

“The Gospel of Jesus Christ” = “The Good News of Jesus the Anointed One”

 

But there’s more: “Jesus” is the Greek version of the Hebrew name “Yeshua” which means “God Saves” or “God Rescues.” Actually, “Yeshua” is literally “Yah-Rescues” where “Yah” refers to God’s personal name (often written Yahweh in English). This divine name (YHWH in the Hebrew scriptures) is the name God revealed to Moses from the burning bush and is based on the Hebrew verb  “to be.” It basically means “I AM.” So the name Yeshua or Jesus means, “I AM Saves” or “The God-Who-Is-Rescues.” The name of Jesus carries around in its very definition the truth of the Gospel:

 

“The Gospel of Jesus” = “The Good News that God Saves”

 

And this is, in fact, the “good news” we’re talking about: the good news that you can’t save yourself by your own efforts or religious devotion, but that you need God to rescue you; the good news that, if you recognize your need for a savior and cry out to God, he saves you. God is, in fact, there and he does, in fact, save.  He has done this rescuing by sending Jesus as his chosen Anointed One. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the good news that the God-Who-Is appointed Jesus as a prophet, priest, and king so that he could rescue us and usher in a new kingdom of freedom, justice, and peace. 

The Good news is all about Jesus: what he’s done, what he’s doing now, and what he will do…how he saved us, is saving us, and will save us. That’s who Jesus is; that’s what Jesus does; and that’s what Jesus means.

 

Jesus = God Saves.

 

That’s good news.