On our Lord's own lips and in the records of His life we find, as has
already been noticed, the phrase, 'the gospel of the kingdom'--the
good news of the establishment on earth of the rule of God in the
hearts and lives of men. The person of the King is not yet defined by
it. The diffused dawn floods the sky, and upon them that sit in
darkness the greatness of its light shines, before the sun is above
the horizon. The message of the Forerunner proclaimed, like a herald's
clarion, the coming of the Kingdom, before he could say to a more
receptive few, 'Behold the Lamb of God.' The order is first the
message of the Kingdom, then the discovery of the King. And so that
earlier phrase falls out of use, and when once Christ's life had been
lived, and His death died, the gospel is no longer the message of an
impersonal revolution in the world's attitude to God's will, but the
biography of Him who is at once first subject and monarch of the
Kingdom of Heaven, and by whom alone we are brought into it. The
standing expression comes to be 'the gospel of Christ.'
It is His, not so much because He is the author, as because He is the
subject of it. It is the good news about Christ. He is its contents
and great theme. And so we are led up at once to the great central
peculiarity of Christianity, namely that it is a record of historical
fact, and that all the world's life and blessedness lie in the story
of a human life and death. Christ is Christianity. His biography is
the good news for every child of man.
Neither a philosophy nor a morality, but a history, is the true good
news for men. The world is hungry, and when it cries for bread wise
men give it a stone, but God gives it the fare it needs in the bread
that comes down from Heaven. Though it be of small account in many
people's eyes, like the common barley cakes, the poor man's food, it
is what we all need; and humble people, and simple people, and
uneducated people, and barbarous people, and dying people, and the
little children can all eat and live. They would find little to keep
them from starving in anything more ambitious, and would only break
their teeth in mumbling the dry bones of philosophies and moralities.
But the story of their Brother who has lived and died for them feeds
heart and mind and will, fancy and imagination, memory and hope,
nourishes the whole nature into health and beauty, and alone deserves
to be called good news for men.
All that the world needs lies in that story. Out of it have come peace
and gladness to the soul, light for the understanding, cleansing for
the conscience, renovation for the will, which can be made strong and
free by submission, a resting-place for the heart, and a
starting-point and a goal for the loftiest flights of hope. Out of it
have come the purifying of family and civic life, the culture of all
noble social virtues, the sanctity of the household, and the elevation
of the state. The thinker has found the largest problems raised and
solved therein. The setting forth of a loftier morality, and the
enthusiasm which makes the foulest nature aspire to and reach its
heaven-touching heights, are found together there. To it poet and
painter, architect and musician, owe their noblest themes. The good
news of the world is the story of Christ's life and death. Let us be
thankful for its form; let us be thankful for its substance.
But we must not forget that, as Paul, who is so fond of the word, has
taught us, the historical fact needs some explanation and commentary
to make the history a gospel. He has declared to us 'the gospel which
he preached,' and to which he ascribes saving power, and he gives
these as its elements, 'How that Christ died for our sins, according
to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the
third day, according to the Scriptures.' There are three facts--death,
burial, resurrection. These are the things that any eye could have
seen. Are these the gospel? Is there any saving power in them? Not
unless you add the commentary 'for our sins,' and 'according to the
Scriptures.' That death was a death for us all, by which we are
delivered from our sins--that is the main thing; and in subordination
to that thought, the other that Christ's death was the accomplishment
of prophecies--these make the history a gospel. The bare facts,
without the exhibition of their purpose and meaning, are no more a
gospel than any other story of a death would be. The facts with any
lower explanation of their meaning are no gospel, any more than the
story of the death of Socrates or any innocent martyr would be. If you
would know the good news that will lift your heavy heart from sorrow
and break your chains of sin, that will put music into your life and
make your days blaze into brightness as when the sunlight strikes some
sullen mountain-side that lay black in shadow, you must take the fact
with its meaning, and find your gospel in the life and death of Him
who is more than example and more than martyr. 'How that Christ died
for our sins, according to the Scriptures,' is 'the gospel of Christ.'