Jesus is King: The Gospel We Preach

Those who know me well know that I am a bridge-builder and peacemaker. I love the entire body of Christ which includes our Reformed brothers and sisters, but I find myself needing to give voice to this current debate between Greg Gilbert and Matthew Bates/Scot McKnight on the issue of the nature of the gospel.

Here are all the articles if you want context for what I have to say below.

Read the transcript of Gilbert’s lecture here.

Read Bates’ article here. McKnight’s article here.

Gilbert’s response here. And Bates rebuttle here.

These articles document the back-and-forth between these three with Gilbert reflecting a neo-reformed view that justificaiton by faith is at the center of the gospel.

Bates and McKnight represent those post-evangelicals who are more in line with the gospel vision of Tom Wright and others who view the gospel from the perspective of the kingdom of God, noting that at the heart of the Gospel is the announcement that Jesus came as the embodiment of Israel God to reign as king.

I strongly side with Bates and McKnight on their interpretation of the gospel. To claim that the gospel is justification by faith or to claim that justification is somehow at the center of the gospel is an exegetical and historical mistake, assuming the effect of the gospel is the same thing as the message of the gospel itself.

Jesus is King is what the gospel writers reveal in their gospel accounts. As King Jesus is protecting, provided for, rescuing, and justifying God’s people. In this way justificaiton by faith has a place in gospel proclaimation but it is not at the center of the gospel.

In my discipleship book, By the Way: Getting Serious About Jesus, I write:

The gospel is the big news that Jesus is Lord. Bruxy Cavey calls this short statement “the gospel in three words,” a simple but life-changing phrase. We do not confess “Jesus is Lord” in order to acquire something from Jesus and then move on with our lives. According to Bruxy, “Jesus is not just a means to an end, a ticket to get into heaven, or a way to ‘get saved;’ rather, Jesus is our Leader, our Lover, our Lord here and now. And that is life changing while we live, not just life prolonging when we die.”

The gospel message that Jesus is Lord is the big news that something has happened, something will happen, and now everything is new and different. To confess Jesus is Lord implies that the one confessing has submitted to Jesus’ leadership.

Unfortunately much of the talk about Jesus as Lord reduces Jesus to a religious category, where we assume Jesus is Lord of our “beliefs,” or our religious lives, but certainly not our real lives. Everything becomes new and different when we declare Jesus is Lord, because in doing so we are giving up the rights we have to our lives. We are saying that our lives no longer belong to us; now they belong to Jesus, our landlord. Another word for lord is king, still an archaic word, but one that captures our imagination.

Lord Jesus is King Jesus. This is the gospel.

God’s kingdom has come through King Jesus. “Christ” is not Jesus’ last name, but a title meaning “king,” specifically the Jewish king. The Hebrew word for king is anointed one or messiah, because Jewish people did not coronate their kings—they anointed them with oil. Jesus came in fulfillment of all of Israel’s prophets to be Israel’s king. The God of Israel had always desired to be king of his people. God accommodated himself to the wishes of his people by giving Israel a king even though up to that point he had been their king (1 Samuel 12:12-13).

The psalmists declared with all boldness that God was not only king over Israel, but over all nations. Imagine that daring claim. Israel was just one small, seemingly insignificant people group. Countless other tribes, ethnic groups, and nations surrounded them, each worshiping the deity over their geographic region of the earth, and yet the children of Abraham had the audacity to proclaim that their God was the king of all other gods and earthly kings. In King Jesus, the God of Israel came to rule and reign not just over one strip of land adjacent to the Mediterranean Sea.

King Jesus rules over all nations as Israel’s Messiah and the world’s true Lord.

This is big news.

This is the gospel.