The Gospel of Jesus

In the first chapter of Mark, the word gospel is used three times. This is a strange, “Christian” word to me. I have heard it all of my life, sometimes used, in substitute, Good News. So, when I come across the word gospel, my mind always translates this phrase as such, “good news.” However, even that seems Christianized. I’ve tried to think of the word as it is used in other contexts; and the only other phrase is in colloquial language “that’s the gospel truth” to signify that a particular comment is fully the truth, with no error, or indisputable – this still seems to be very dependent on religion and can only be comprehended in understanding something of the Bible. So, I put on my etymology hat (i.e. went to the internet) and found that most resources (New American Heritage and the like) state that the word originates from the Old English word godspel, a combination of two words, god=good and spel=story. These resources also refer to this word being the translation of the Greek word euangelion; seeming created to translate this Greek word. So, it is inherently tied to the Bible.

In the three verses it is used, I’ve tried to wrap my mind around this way of usage: the good story of Jesus Christ (Mark 1:1), the good story of God (Mark 1:14), believe in the good story (Mark 1:15). It seems that what Mark is saying, in these three verses is that he, Mark, is telling the story of Jesus Christ (verse 1) in the same way that Jesus was telling the story of God (verse 14). In verse 15, Jesus calls us to believe in this story. In each, the language is centered around the communication of a subject, in this case the subject being God (and Jesus, as Mark would contend). Just as Mark, in the first verse, is stating that the following account is the communication of the subject Jesus (and this just a beginning/introduction to the whole story) so, too, Jesus is communicating the subject of God to his audience, and asking them to believe in what He is saying about this God. This takes me two places.

First, Good News, though good, is just truth news. I’ve known this the whole time, but, due to language, the word good has taken on a qualitative meaning, rather than a quantitative meaning (for you Engineers). The news had been a quality of being good rather than a quantity (on versus off, one versus zero, true versus false) of being good. This news, this gospel, is simply just news about God; it happens to be good news (in that I like it, it has benefit for me), but it also happens just to be news, happens just to be a story, albeit about the Creator of the Universe. Mark is stating, “here is the story of Jesus,” Jesus is stating, “here is the story of God,” and then Jesus is asking me, and my neighbors, to believe in this story of God.

Second, Jesus, when stating to believe in the gospel, seems to be talking about believing in what He, Jesus, is telling the people. In my mind, gospel is a big word, a big hurdle, but in Jesus’ mind (who didn’t grow up with the religious connotations around the word gospel) He is simply stating, believe in this story, this subject, that I am telling you. This is a bit different than believing in “the gospel” as if it is a set of words or prescribed bullet points, a system of belief, if you will. In my life, thinking of gospel in this way, allows new life to come into what Mark is saying and what Jesus is saying; one aspect of Jesus’ service: teaching the story of God.