All Comments for: The 8 Marks of a Robust Gospel | Christianity Today

Free Newsletters:

RSS Feeds |

Audio |

Twitter

Home > 2008 > March

Christianity Today, March, 2008 |

CHRISTIAN VISION PROJECT

The 8 Marks of a Robust Gospel

Reviving forgotten chapters in the story of redemption.

Scot McKnight | posted 2/29/2008 08:59AM

This year the Christian Vision Project is asking our simplest but most important question yet: Is our gospel too small? Scot McKnight, professor of New Testament at North Park University, certainly can't ...

[Reader Reviews]

Average User Rating:

Rate and Comment on this article

Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 comments.

Page: 1

Show All

David

Posted: March 04, 2008 12:45 PM

This is a fresh presentation of the age-old truth! We have set our minds on earthly things and the church has paid a terrible price. McKnight's article reminds us, inspires, and encourages us to, "Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory." (Colossians 3:2-3) When we understand and live this truth, our world will be transformed - one life at a time, and beginning with me!

Bob Young

Posted: March 03, 2008 11:43 AM

Anyone willing to weep with me for the pitiful state of Christianity? These negative, accusative, distorted comments are an embarassment to the name of Jesus. That's not how you treat a brother. Just because he thinks the atonement did more than merely rescue individuals from hell doesn't mean he denies that it also does that. And the jargon he used was because the audience he was writing to was supposed to already understand that - if he were writing to non-believers, of COURSE he wouldn't use technical jargon. If you've ever read any of McKnight's works, you'd see his care at keeping things simple while not shying away from dealing with complex issues. Please please please re-read the scriptures with an eye to this "kingdom" Scot refers to. When we get on board in love with what Jesus is focusing on, these distinctions of Calvinist, Arminian, Premillenial, Postmillenial, etc. will be seen as disposable man-made trinkets as we invest in God's "now and not yet".

kingdavid

Posted: March 03, 2008 10:47 AM

I found much freshness in this article, especially the last paragraph, and this one: If our only problem is individual guilt, the solution can be reduced to Good Friday. But as we acknowledge our problem in its true biblical proportions, we need more than Good Friday: we need Christmas as Incarnation, Good Friday as Substitution and Paradigm and the stripping of systemic powers from their illegitimate thrones, Easter as New Creation, and Pentecost as Empowerment. As far as the writing goes, I may be on staff at a church, but I often feel like a sophomore in a Bible college somewhere. This article reached me. And methinks we shouldn't focus too much on the stylized crunches and puffs that our American church culture tells us we need for things to be meaningful.

Darren King - Precipice Magazine

Posted: March 01, 2008 3:46 PM

People, Please re-read this article and consider it thoughtfully and prayerfully. Responding with your typical, narrow, truncated version of the gospel only serves to demonastrate your quick-tongued narrow-mindedness. When you're done re-reading the article, try re-reading the Bible, preferably with a fresh lens. Perhaps then you will see that the multifacted nature of the good news of the gospel has always been there, you just haven't been able to see it through your previously speckled lens.

no jargon please

Posted: March 01, 2008 9:14 AM

Honestly, I didn't enjoy this article. It is too intellectual and full of cliches. We need to present a gospel that spells out to people just what "gospel" means. Namely that we have two types of "good news": firstly we have Jesus as a good King who rules over all and secondly we have eternal life through Jesus. Jesus lives forever and showed it when he rose from the grave. The good news then is all about Jesus who was put to death and Jesus who rose from the dead to assure us of our own eternal life, for everyone who believes. This good news is exiting and we all want to share it and our lives with others and, so, enjoy God's life with others - which is what "church" is. Just like in Acts chapter 2. It is not much more complicated than that. Then we become generous and happy and secure under God's grace, sharing it with others. We can't teach ordinary people in the street about this good news by using in-group jargon and techno-speak that comes from older translations of the bible.

Ephrem Hagos

Posted: March 01, 2008 8:53 AM

It appears that there really is no room at all in Theology for the jewel in the crown of the story of redemption. To write "the crucified Christ Paul preached was an empty-cross Christ" misses completely the redemption deeds of Christ, viz.: the cause and effect of His death (of which Paul was fully aware); which cannot be understood apart from the cross; and which miraculously continue to testify in firsthand and personal revelation the divinity of Christ to anyone who cares to "look at Him whom they pierced". This is the "new covenant" of putting the law within us and writing it on our hearts; the new covenant by which everyone will know the LORD independent of one another (Jer. 31: 31-34) invoked on the eve (Matt. 26: 26-29) and fulfilled on the crucifixion and death of Jesus!

JohnW

Posted: March 01, 2008 8:24 AM

Um, ok, Geoff, if you can get past the fact that "the G" mentions Ron Paul in his comments, you might be able to recognize he is passionate about what he believes, but not a crackpot. Re-read point 4: When Jesus stood up to read Isaiah 61 in the synagogue at Nazareth, then sat down and declared that this prophetic vision was now coming to pass through him, there was more than personal redemption at work. God's kingdom....overturning the injustices and exclusions of the empire and establishing an inclusive and just alternative. Sadly, if Christ were alive today and was on TV saying what he said in Luke Chapter 4, James Dobson, Tony Perkins, et. al would dismiss him as advocating class warfare and being a liberal. And that whole "love your enemies" bit...clearly Jesus just doesn't "get it" when it comes to our nation's epic struggle with global "islamofascism".

Leroy

Posted: March 01, 2008 7:02 AM

As good as McKnight's article is, Chris G's comments are spot on, underlying a weakness in McKnight's conclusion that church is not optional. "Church" is a loaded term, which has come to mean whatever 1 guy with a bible or divinity school degree and 3 of his convents want it to mean. What gives credence to a particular (local) "church" is how successful it then becomes in terms of members, budgets, profile of the pastor, blah, blah, all of which underly the unfortunate reality that whatever "church" has come to mean, it may or may not (not) mean the body of Christ, which more often than not seems to be at war with itself. Again, McKnight's article is a fine piece of writing, which makes me wonder why most of the comments to it are by crackpots, cranks and the utterly confused. I guess if CT posts something challenging, that is well written and insightful, the vast majority of CT readers get lost or confused. What does that say about CT and its readers?

Chris G.

Posted: February 29, 2008 10:37 PM

But who defines this Church that we live in community with? Given the buffet-approach options for Protestant Christians, how would one of them know that the particular local congregation they are a part of truly is the Church, the eucharistic community, the New Israel? Whose version of the gospel: Calvinist, Arminian, Roman Catholic, et al? Which interpretive framework has the authority to claim that it truly is the Regula Fidei, the one faithful to the interpretive key of Jesus and the Apostles? Dr. McKnight has raised important issues and given a grand view of the Gospel that drinks from the fountain of the ancient Church, but it leaves unanswered the question: What is the Church? This is one point of crisis for Western Christianity and the confusion that reigns in the myriad voices claiming to be the Truth.

Ken Schenck

Posted: February 29, 2008 2:59 PM

I am convinced that McKnight has the pulse of where evangelical Christianity is headed--away from a cold intellectualism for whom people are lost to ideas, ministry to the whole person rather than just the soul, recognition and implementation of Jesus' focus on the poor and disempowered in his earthly ministry, and the importance of the visible body of Christ. I take the vehement--yet biblically indefensible--reaction of some as the dying protest of the hard hearted. It will take several more years to die, but die it will. As Gamaliel implied, wherever God is taking us, none of us will be able to stand in its way.

Joseph Kontz

Posted: February 29, 2008 2:22 PM


The "Robust Gospel" to which you refer, if it is The Saving Gospel revealed in Scripture, purchased by the personal death-burial-and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, inculcated by the regenerating ministry of the Holy Spirit, and recieved by a saving faith, is The True Gospel. Anything less "robust" is a pretense.

Ian	Posted: February 29, 2008 2:20 PM

Who wrote the intro to this article? Scot's commentary on Galatians in the NIV Application Commentary series, which he succeeds in massacring, is not suggestive of big mindedness. Scott is an Arminian firmly entrenched in the New Perspective, in which personal sin and guilt is minimised, the substitutionary aspect of Christ's suffering is denied, the message of the Cross is distorted, and the language whilst grand is disconnected from careful, contextual exegesis of the Word. And this article is ample evidence of this. There is nothing small in a Gospel firmly rooted in Scripture.

Robert

Posted: February 29, 2008 12:58 PM

McKnight's article is by far the best thing CT Online has posted in a very long time. My only critique is that while McKnight may be correct when he writes "So "joining the church" isn't an option for Christians" if unfortunately begs the question of what is meant by "church" when the vast majority of the institutions passing themselves off as church bear little if any resemblance to what we see in the NT. Regarding The G's comments - obviously this written by a bitter and confused person, who does not seem to understand (among other things) that Ron Paul, as a libertarian, would be indifferent to the cost of gas, which should be left to the free markets where the market participants will determine to cost of a gallon of gas. Nor would Ron Paul be particularly concerned that Exxon made a profit last year, the size of which about he would more than likely be indifferent.

Geoff

Posted: February 29, 2008 12:28 PM


Umm.... Ok.... who moderates these comments?

The G

Posted: February 29, 2008 11:57 AM

Nothing new here. He needs to find a better congregation to grow in the Word of God. Too cerebral. Let God take everything away from him, then write the article. America--gas is $3.20 a gallon and Exxon made $50 billion profit last year. When are you going to look at Ron Paul for president? The media is the patsy to who really runs the world. Globalization = satanisation. People are losing their homes and we sit around and talk and write nonsense. We can't even get the church to return to immersion faith, repentance, immersion. We still hear the man-made "sinner's prayer" as the substitute for what God has said. Nothing will change until the book of Acts is taken seriously. Calvinism has got to be defeated. And, Israel is not Israel of the flesh but by faith (All of Romans 11). The church = the true Israel. Premillennialism is a lie. I was raised on it. I know.

Page: 1

E-mail this page

Write CT

Print this article

Post a comment