Book Review: “What Is the Gospel?”
By Greg Gilbert; Foreward by D.A. Carson
Some books require great effort and meticulous editing prior to publishing. Others encompass topics you know so well that the content simply flows, and the end-product is equally excellent. The latter is the case with the book I’m reviewing today: “What Is the Gospel?” by Greg Gilbert. I briefly met Mr. Gilbert when he was an associate pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington D.C., serving with Mark Dever of the 9Marks ministry. As I understand it, Greg wrote this book to be a simple rendition of the gospel but not as an evangelistic tool. He wrote a book about the gospel for Christians.
The reason is that, as the writer of the forward D.A. Carson is fond of saying, we are always only one generation away from forgetting and losing the gospel. And the gospel is everything. After all, it is our commonly-used name: the word “evangelical” simply means “about the gospel.” But when Paul commanded Timothy, “Do the work of an evangelist” (2 Timothy 4:5), that’s a slight mistranslation. As Carson points out, a more literal rendering is preferable. The original word is simply the verb form of “gospel”: “Do the work of a gospeler.” But it is not at all clear that Paul means only with non-Christians. After all, when he wrote 1 Corinthians, he was writing to Christians, and his whole theme he summarized as “Christ crucified.”
I explain all of this because of a common response I get when I have recommended this book to other Christians: “Oh, we’ve already learned that.” The implication is that we learn the gospel, and then we graduate from it, leaving it behind for grander, more complex thoughts. You see this a lot in good athletes: we get tired of working on the basics, but it’s no coincidence that Vince Lombardi once began a preseason with his Packers by saying, “Boys, this is a football.” The gospel is our frame and our ground for living all of life. Or to combine the theme statements of John Piper and Douglas Wilson: “All that God is for us in Christ is for all of life.” So we must never become so adult-like that we lose our childlike delight in the good news that Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, took on human flesh, lived a perfect life for us, and died for us on a cross for us, in our place, for the forgiveness of our sins. For we have all told God to shove off, and that leads to death. But God loved us too much to leave us dead in our sins, and so he sent His Son.
And to prove that Jesus is the Messiah, because he did all things well according to the Father’s will, God raised him from the dead, proving that he is King. King of what? Yes. Now the path to life is found only under his reign. And we can gain this forgiveness and life for ourselves only by faith in him.
This is the gospel that Mr. Gilbert unpacks for us in this tidy, brief and readable book. He is quite gifted with metaphors - you’ll see what I mean in the opening metaphor of GPS. But he is equally gifted in giving clear definition to the metaphors. The outline of the book is simple: God, man, Christ, and response. Simple enough for any Christian to remember. This of course is not the only outline that may be followed to clearly describe the gospel, but it’s a good one.
So should you read this book? You can answer that by asking this question of yourself:
What would you say, right now, if someone asked you, “What is the gospel?”
How would that go? More than likely the answer means you should get this book, read it, mark it up, and in doing so, enjoy God more deeply, and draw in others to do the same.
P.S. If you attend my church and you’re short on funds, just take a copy from the foyer. Thanks to 9Marks for providing us pricing for that purpose.
Link: https://a.co/d/10ZhW8a