Living the King Jesus Gospel: Discipleship and Ministry Then and Now (A Tribute to Scot McKnight)

Introduction

Nijay K. Gupta, Tara Beth Leach, Matthew W. Bates, Drew J. Strait

This book on discipleship, ministry, and the Christian life is a tribute to the writing ministry and scholarship of Rev. Canon Dr. Scot McKnight. His published works are impressively wide-ranging, from Jesus studies, to hermeneutics, to Pauline theology, to books on Mary, fasting, and science. But if there is one subject that he has returned to over and over again, it is discipleship. Christians are the people who take seriously the Jesus Creed: love God and love neighbor. Christians embrace Jesus as the one true Messiah King. And Christians receive and share the King Jesus Gospel. This book presents a series of academic and homiletical reflections on discipleship and ministry inspired by Scot’s important work.

Living the King Jesus Gospel is divided into three sections. The first seven essays are focused on the gospel, ministry, and discipleship in the New Testament. The second part concentrates on what living the King Jesus Gospel looks like from the perspective of various post-New Testament historical eras or traditions (i.e., the Church Fathers, the Orthodox tradition, the Reformers, the Anglican tradition). The last part includes essays from practitioners on ministry and discipleship today. Sixteen contributors in all present a breadth of perspectives on Christian life with a view towards the past, present, and future of the church. What is the thread that ties all of these richly diverse essays together? The one gospel of Jesus Christ, good news for the whole world.

Part 1: New Testament

1

Is There Any Gospel in the Gospels?

¹

Michael F. Bird

Introduction

Evangelicals are so named because of their commitment to the evangel, that is, the gospel. The joyous proclamation that God has wrought salvation in Jesus Christ and this salvation is received by repentance and faith. The evangelical faith is about churches, associations, and para-church bodies gathering to proclaim the gospel and striving to live out a life worthy of the gospel.

²

The gospel suffuses the entire New Testament even as there are different narrations of the story of Jesus, epitomes of apostolic preaching, summaries of the gospel, and theological argumentation concerned with the defense of the gospel itself.

³

There are also diversities associated with various Christian traditions who tend to emphasize certain aspects or implications of the gospel in their own ecclesial cultures. The Latin-western tradition tends to focus on the human problem as guilt and justification as the solution. Meanwhile, the Greek Orthodox tradition tends to operate in terms of death and corruption solved by Jesus’s resurrection and participation in his divine life. Methodist theologians major on the gospel’s message of forgiveness and renewal unto holiness. Pentecostalism would begin with humanity’s spiritual alienation from God and narrate the gospel as Jesus the Spirit-bearer and Spirit-giver who makes us alive to God. Liberation theologians start with human experience of oppression and describe Jesus as the agent of divine justice to the oppressed.

⁴

The Reformed tradition, broadly conceived, is a sub-species of the Latin tradition, arguably distinguished by an attempt to recover apostolic hermeneutics, its innovations on justification, a focus on substitutionary atonement, with due emphasis on union with Christ and the work of the Spirit in salvation. However, I think it is fair to say that many contemporary expressions of Reformed evangelicalism are merely engaged in a selective riffing off the Synod of Dort in their constructions of Reformed-ness. Moreover, they lack the catholic sensibilities, canonical consciousness, and pneumatic commitments that characterized the early reformational theologians. The result is that this pop-Reformed theological culture is, at its worst,

⁵

a kind of crass Paulinism as viewed through the lens of the Synod of Dort. It is Calvinist in a sense, but perhaps more Calvin Klein in its ability to fuse fad, brand prestige, celebrity pastors, and low-church elitism.

I submit for many seminarians these days, whether Reformed or not, that their gospel is very Paul-shaped, almost solus Paulus! They can grasp the gospel as something evident in Galatians and Rom 1–8, but struggle to be able to identify any gospel in the rest of the New Testament. This is partly due to a myopic focus on the gospel of justification, but also due to a syllogistic view of salvation whereby they learn that (1) God is holy, (2) Humanity is sinful, (3) Humanity needs a God-man to take away the penalty of our sin that affronts this holy God. If the gospel is set out that way, one can jump from Gen 3 to Rom 3, with the result that the story of Israel and Jesus are not required in any account of the gospel. Lest I be accused of overstatement, I routinely ask students how to preach the gospel from the Old Testament Psalms like the apostles did and I inquire of them in what sense the Gospels convey the gospel. The answers I receive convey a mixture of biblical illiteracy and hermeneutical obliviousness. As such, I am thankful for the work of Scot McKnight who, in his celebrated volume The King Jesus Gospel, addresses this very problem, i.e., how to connect the gospel to the stories of creation, Israel, and the prophetic career of Jesus the Messiah.

⁶

In this essay I will attempt to offer an exemplar in explaining how the gospel can actually be found in the canonical Gospels with a view to widening the horizons of readers who might find themselves wearing a theological restraining straitjacket whereby they can only grasp the gospel when it is translated into (selective!) Pauline categories. I will achieve that by examining specific units from each Evangelist to demonstrate that the gospel is tangibly and authentically present in our very Gospels.

Matthew 26–28

The story of Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection is the climax in all four Gospels and this is powerfully narrated in Matt 26–28. Matthew tells the story of Jesus’s anointing at Bethany, the Last Supper, Judas’s betrayal, Jesus’s arrest and trial, then his crucifixion, death, and burial, followed by his resurrection. Matthew is, I believe, riffing off Mark, but he does it to indicate that Jesus is the triumphant suffering servant king who ushers in the kingdom of heaven by his royal and redemptive death.

You have to appreciate a certain tension that Matthew builds into his story. On the one hand, Jesus emerges across the story as the true Israelite, the new Moses, the promised Davidic king who heralds the good news of God’s reign over God’s people in God’s place. The recurring Davidic motif, Jesus’s amazing authority over illness, nature, and evil spirits, as well as the Spirit’s powerful work in Jesus might make one think that Jesus is destined to flatten every Herodian, Roman, or Pharisee who gets in his way. But on the other hand, Matthew has majored on Jesus also as Isaiah’s Suffering Servant, full of humility not hubris, a shepherd not a warrior, armed with only prayer and conviction, who is willing to lay down his life like the prophets before him. The resolution to this tension is found at the climax of Matthew’s Gospel. As Terence Donaldson explains:

At the end of the story the tension [between Jesus as a Davidic king versus Jesus as the suffering servant] is fully resolved. Jesus’ apparent defeat turns out to be his victory. Precisely because he followed the path of humble obedience to the end, refusing to use the power at his disposal to extricate himself from the consequences of his obedience (e.g.,

26

:

53

–

54

), Jesus is vindicated in resurrection and endowed with all authority in heaven and on earth (

28

:

18

). Sovereignty is won through suffering. It is precisely his faithfulness as the humble, obedient Son that makes possible in the divine scheme of things, his exaltation as the royal, sovereign Son. And as Son, who shares a name with the Father and the Holy Spirit, he is the teacher and baptismal means of identity for a new people drawn not only from Israel but from all nations (

28

:

19

–

20

).

⁷

Let me add that Matt 1–25 is not an overly lengthy preface to 26–28; no, it is intrinsic to the Gospel story. Matthew ties the story of Easter to the story of Jesus’s career, which itself is tethered to the story of Israel. Jesus’s death and resurrection and its saving power is only intelligible in the context of the earthly career of the one who was born and baptized to save people from their sins (Matt 1:21–23). Jesus comes to Israel, to the covenant people (Matt 10:5–6; 15:24), because God’s salvation was intended to come to and through Israel and then extend to the world—something that Matthew himself stresses at various points (Matt 4:15; 8:5–13; 15:21–28; 24:14; 28:19–20). Matthew’s Gospel is proof too that one cannot jump from Gen 3 to Rom 3. The gospel story is incomplete if it is not an outworking of the story of creation, the story of Israel, and the story of Jesus as an outworking of God’s story to—as Tom Wright often says—put the world to rights. Viewed this way, Matthew’s Gospel is a kerygmatic biography, not a syllogism reasoning from human sins through God’s love to an invitation to salvation. Rather, Matthew’s Gospel forms a bridge between the old and new: between prophecy and fulfillment, between the law and the gospel and between Israel and the church.

⁸

Matthew’s Gospel is bookended with Jesus’s divine name Emmanuel (Matt 1:23) and his possession of all authority in heaven and on earth (Matt 28:18). James Dunn sums up what this means: For Matthew, Jesus was not simply Son of God, son of David, Messiah, Son of Man, Moses, prophet. He embodied God’s presence and universal authority in a way that no other servant of God had done before.

⁹

It is this overtly high Christology, combined with the narration of Jesus’s career and its prophetic fulfillment, that provides the coordinates for us to understand the passion and resurrection of Jesus as the Davidic Messiah in Matthew 26–28. Matthew’s Gospel is gospel because it lays out how the kingdom of heaven comes in the Messiah’s redemptive death (Matt 20:28), the angelic report of his resurrection (Matt 28:8), and making clear that he is worthy of worship (Matt 28:9).

Mark 2:1–12

Jesus’s healing of a paralytic man in a house in Capernaum after his four faithful friends dig a hole through the roof to lower him down is one of the most memorable stories in the Gospels. In the Markan version we read:

When he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. ² So many gathered around that there was no longer room for them, not even in front of the door; and he was speaking the word to them. ³ Then some people came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. ⁴ And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; and after having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay. ⁵ When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, Son, your sins are forgiven. ⁶ Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, ⁷ Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone? ⁸ At once Jesus perceived in his spirit that they were discussing these questions among themselves; and he said to them, "Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? ⁹ Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and take your mat and walk?’ ¹⁰ But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins"—he said to the paralytic— ¹¹ I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home. ¹² And he stood up, and immediately took the mat and went out before all of them; so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, We have never seen anything like this! (Mark

2

:

1

–

12

, NRSV)

In many ways, this short healing episode is the story of the gospel in a nutshell. Jesus is the Son of Man, a complex term connoting Jesus as the representative of God’s rule, God’s king, and God’s people (see Dan 7:13–14) and specifically denoting Jesus’s authority over demons, nature, illness, and even to forgive sins (reflected across Mark 1–8). Jesus commends the four men for their faith in (literally!) unroofing the roof to lower down their paralyzed friend when the crowds pressing around the house prevented their access. Jesus announces the forgiveness of the paralyzed man’s sins and soon after the man experiences his own resurrection of sorts as he is able to stand up much to the amazement of the onlookers who immediately give glory to God.

The tension in the story is that Jesus forgives the paralytic man’s sins and the scribes sneeringly retort, It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone? (Mark 2:7). I used to think that the problem was that Jesus was acting like a rogue priest in offering the forgiveness of sins that one would normally find in the temple when the priests would declare forgiveness to the offerer after the sacrificial rite. The problem is that there is no evidence such a declaration was ever part of the Jerusalem cultus and we have anachronistically projected the Christian liturgical event of confession and absolution back into the Jerusalem cultus. So the problem was not that Jesus is acting like an unaccredited priest, rather, he’s exercising divine prerogatives! Yet the proof that Jesus has divine authority to forgive sins is the evidence that he can make a paralyzed man stand up and walk. The logic is that if Jesus can do a miracle that depends on God’s power, then he can speak God’s word of forgiveness too.

¹⁰

The story has a definite evangelical quality. While there is no mention of crucifixion and resurrection, nonetheless, the healing of the paralytic demonstrates Jesus’s amazing authority. It raises the question of his mysterious identity, his ability to speak for God, the necessity of faith, the forgiveness of sins, and salvation as the recovery of one’s standing before God and one’s physical ability to stand up. This short vignette, only a dozen verses, showcases Jesus as one who speaks and acts for God, who has compassion on those who suffer, who commends the faith of those who come to him, and who offers the gifts of forgiveness and healing, after which the onlookers are rightly astounded. Is that not the gospel?

Luke 4:16–30

The Lukan version of Jesus’s visit to Nazareth (see Mark 6:1–6; Matt 13:54–58) is unique in many respects not the least for the way that Luke uses it to frame the beginning of Jesus’s Galilean ministry.

¹⁶ When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, ¹⁷ and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: ¹⁸ "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, ¹⁹ to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor." ²⁰ And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. ²¹ Then he began to say to them, Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. (Luke

4

:

16

–

21

, NRSV).

The account in Luke 4:16–30 is a programmatic summary of Jesus’s ministry and presages the various themes recurrent across Luke-Acts: Spirit, fulfillment, salvation, mission, Christology, Israel’s rejection, and God’s acceptance of outcasts.

¹¹

In this episode, Jesus enters his hometown of Nazareth, on the Sabbath in the synagogue he is invited to share a word of exhortation, he reads from Isa 61:1–2, and then he utters a nine-word sermon (in both Greek and English): Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. Jesus is then blandly snubbed by the audience and he responds by quoting the proverbs of the sick physician and the prophet without honor in his hometown. His prophetic response continues with allusions to the scriptural stories of the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian to reiterate that when Israel rejects God’s message that God will extend his blessings to those outside the covenant community (1 Kgs 17:1–24; 2 Kgs 5:1–14). Notable too is that there is also an interesting connection between Isa 61, prophetic fulfillment, and messianic salvation shared between Luke and several Qumran scrolls (11QMelch 2.4, 9, 14, 19–20; 4Q521 2.12).

Whether you like it or not, this is the one part of the Bible where you must admit that the liberation theologians are onto something. Jesus does not read from Isaiah, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to bring good news to the affluent middle classes who want enough religion to make them feel secure with God, but nothing too cumbersome that is going to unsettle their consumerist and hyper-individualist way of life. Jesus speaks of Isaianic salvation in terms of God liberating the poor, the oppressed, the blind, and the captive. The idea taps into the Jewish notion of Jubilee from Lev 25 with the remission of debts and the freeing of slaves. It is the rescue of such vulnerable people that is the proof that the day of salvation has dawned and that Jesus is the promised Messiah (see Luke 7:22–23; 19:9–10). This would have been very meaningful to Jesus’s own audience who were still waiting for the grand promises of the exilic prophets to fully and finally end the lasting effects of the Babylonian exile. It was also good news in Luke’s day when many of his own audience lived lives on the margins of society, suffered under various caste systems and systemic injustices, who knew poverty, hunger, alienation, and shame.

This Lukan passage, often called the Nazareth Manifesto, shows us that the gospel of the kingdom has a holistic vision of salvation. It centers on the theme of aphesis/aphiēmi, the act of freeing or liberating someone, from sins (Luke 1:77; 3:3; 5:20; 7:48; 11:4; 24:27; Acts 2:38; 3:19; 5:31; 10:43; 13:38–39; 22:16; 26:18), from illness (Luke 4:39), and from debts (Luke 11:4). That is not to reduce the authentic gospel to the banal social gospel of old liberalism or to secular social justice projects with a light sprinkling of Bible verses. That said, the gospel of Jesus the Nazarene is a justice-bringing, slavery-crushing, illness-healing, debt-remitting, low-status-reversing, sin-cleansing, outsider-including, and truthing-to-power gospel. If the gospel is not good news to the poor in Nairobi slums, to the Maori of New Zealand, to engineering students in Norway, to Walmart employees in Nashville, to inmates in a prison in Nova Gama, then it ain’t really good news in the biblical sense.

John 5:19–29

The Gospel of John is traditionally known as the spiritual gospel, which I take to mean the gospel at spiritual depth. John’s Gospel is clearly similar in genre and basic content to the Synoptic Gospels, but it resources a different tradition about Jesus, it has a different narrative style, and offers a very thick theological overlay on the memory of Jesus it bequeaths to us.

¹²

One unique feature of John’s Gospel is the various discourses whereby Jesus speaks about a given subject usually related to some controversy that his actions have caused. John 5 includes the unique Johannine episode of Jesus healing a paralyzed man at the pool of Siloam (John 5:1–15) and Jesus then launches into a discourse about the authority of the Son in light of critics who disapprove of him healing a person on the sabbath (John 5:19–29).

The discourse begins with Jesus asserting the mutual actions of the Father and the Son (v. 19), the Father’s love for the Son with the Son authorized to raise the dead and to exercise judgment (vv. 20–22), with the result that the Son should be honored just as the Father is honored (v. 23). Thereafter comes a memorable Johannine statement about the promise of eternal life and deliverance from judgment through faith in God:

²⁴ Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life. ²⁵ "Very truly, I tell you, the hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. ²⁶ For just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself; ²⁷ and he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. ²⁸ Do not be astonished at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice ²⁹ and will come out—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.

The entire discourse is remarkable not least because of its christological claims. Jesus asserts that he should be honored, i.e., worshiped, just as God the Father, he engages in a mutual and reciprocal work with the Father, he possesses authority or power to impart life and to execute judgment, and he even possesses life in himself—all of which intensifies the mounting claims for a christological monotheism in the Johannine Gospel. Then, in verse 24, Jesus declares that those who hear his words and believe the Father who sent him have been transferred (Greek: metabainō) from the realm of death and condemnation to the realm of eternal life and (implicitly) acquittal. These words depict belief as facilitating a transfer of spheres or states, from mortality and condemnation to life and deliverance. The picture is one of a new exodus with the believer being redeemed and rescued from sin and death and being brought into a realm of life, peace, and communion with God.

The act of faith has a salient role in the scheme of salvation that the fourth evangelist sketches out. If the Father is the cause of salvation, if Jesus the Son is the agent of salvation, then the believer’s faith is the instrument of salvation (even though John never once uses the noun pistis, the verb pisteuō in its participle form is prevalent). Faith is paramount across John’s Gospel

¹³

and, in this instance, quite precise. According to D. A. Carson: The belief is spelled out, and its object is the one who sent Jesus—not because it would be inappropriate to specify Jesus as the object of faith (e.g. 3:16; 14:1), but because the immediate context is concerned to show how the Son in all he says and does mediates the Father to us. As the words and deeds of the Son are the words and deeds of the Father, so faith placed in the Son is placed in the Father who sent him.

¹⁴

We have here a Johannine equivalent to the Pauline notion of justification by faith; in fact, there is a remarkable resemblance with Paul’s language in Col 1:13–14 and Rom 6:23.

In what follows in verses 25–29 is a clear instance of John’s inaugurated eschatology. The hour, the eschatological moment determining the future of the cosmos, has already burst upon the world, proved by the fact that people are already experiencing a spiritual resurrection as a foretaste of the physical resurrection of the dead (v. 25). Then, rehearsing verses 21–22, we read in verses 26–27 a statement to the effect that just as the Father has life in himself, so too does the Son, enabling him to bestow life and to execute judgment. In a parenthetical remark, John explains, Because he is the Son of Man, that is, to say, he is the figure of eschatological power and authority who shares in God’s reign according to Dan 7:13–14 (cf. 1 Enoch 69.26–29). Next, in verses 28–29, the Johannine Jesus warns that a future hour is coming when the dead will hear the Son of Man’s voice and those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation. At this point readers can be forgiven for being confused. What is the condition for eternal life: is it believing the Father sent Jesus (v. 24) or doing good (v. 29)? The dichotomy is most likely of our own making since for John faith/belief entails obedience/allegiance in God the Father and the Son.

¹⁵

In fact, there’s a similar pattern in John 3 and 5 whereby salvation is by faith (John 3:16–19; 5:24) yet there is an accompanying judgment of deeds and vindication for the deeds done in/for God (John 3:20–21; 5:28–29).

There are three things operating here. First, faith is trusting in God the Father and his Son with particular focus on their relationship and the specific redemptive roles granted to the Son. Second, true faith demonstrates its integrity and authenticity by its deeds done in God so that the way one lives forms the test of the faith one professes.

¹⁶

Third, the eschatological judgment will expose everyone’s deeds for either dwelling in darkness or walking in the light.

¹⁷

In sum, John 5:19–29 is an excellent gospel-passage which showcases an instance of gospel with its high Christology, new exodus theme, highlighting the instrumentality of faith, the offer of eternal life, the deliverance from judgment, along with the need to remain faithful to God in one’s own life.

Conclusion

Is there any gospel in the Gospels? Much in every way! Hopefully, I have demonstrated that when it comes to the gospel, we need not automatically think of our favorite Pauline passages from Romans or Galatians. Instead, we can, without caution or qualification, run to those books we call Gospels in order to set out the gospel. Now do not misunderstand me, I would rather die than speak ill of the apostle to the gentiles. I sincerely appreciate and even adore the apostle Paul and his own invaluable articulation of the gospel (esp. Rom 1:2–4; 1 Cor 15:3–5; 2 Tim 2:8). Yet my point is that Paul is not the only evangelical show playing in the New Testament.

¹⁸

The books we call Gospels are suffused with gospel, they tell a gospel-story, about the gospel-proclaiming and gospel-proclaimed Jesus of Nazareth. Matthew 26–28 is the gospel of Jesus as it tells us about his passion and resurrection set against the backdrop of his messianic career and as part of the fulfillment of Israel’s hopes. Also, Mark 2:1–12 is a wonderful vignette that touches on Jesus’s compassion for those suffering, the forgiveness of sins, and his divine authority. Then, Luke 4:16–30 is exemplary for the holistic nature of salvation it sets out in Jesus as liberator, proving that you can bring together the radicalness of Martin Luther and the justice-quest of Martin Luther King. Finally, John 5:19–29 is a wonderful amalgam of the main features of John’s Gospel, Jesus as truly divine, the concerted emphasis on faith, a new exodus in Israel’s messiah, and the hour of decision confronting his audience.

Thus, I submit that we do not preach the gospel without Paul, but neither do we preach by Paul alone. Rather, we preach the gospel based on the full counsel of God and the entirety of the apostolic witness, including the testimony of the evangelists, a testimony that we rightly and properly call Gospel.

Works Cited

Bates, Matthew W. Salvation by Allegiance Alone: Rethinking Faith, Works, and the Gospel of Jesus the King. Grand Rapids: Baker,

2017

.

———. Gospel Allegiance: What Faith in Jesus Misses for Salvation in Christ. Grand Rapids: Brazos,

2019

.

Bird, Michael F. Synoptics and John. In Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, edited by Joel B. Green et al.,

920

–

24

.

2

nd ed. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity,

2013

.

———. Jesus the Eternal Son: Answering Adoptionist Christology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,

2017

.

———. Evangelical Theology: A Biblical and Systematic Introduction.

2

nd ed. Grand Rapids: Zondervan,

2020.

Bock, Darrell. Recovering the Real Lost Gospel: Reclaiming the Gospel as Good News. Nashville: B&H,

2010

.

Campbell, Ted. The Gospel in Christian Traditions. Oxford: Oxford University Press,

2009

.

Carson, D. A. The Gospel according to John. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,

1991

.

Carson, D. A., and Timothy Keller, eds. The Gospel as Center: Renewing our Faith and Reforming Our Ministry Practices. Wheaton: Crossway,

2012

.

Dickson, John. The Best Kept Secret of Christian Mission: Promoting the Gospel with More Than Our Lips. Grand Rapids: Zondervan,

2013

.

Donaldson, Terence L. The Vindicated Son: A Narrative Approach to Matthean Christology. In Contours of Christology in the New Testament, edited by Richard N. Longenecker,

100

–

121

. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,

2005

.

Dunn, James D. G. Methodology of Evangelism in the New Testament: Some Preliminary Reflections. In New Testament Theology in Light of the Church’s Mission: Essays in Honor of I. Howard Marshall, edited by Jon C. Laansma et al.,

25

–

40

. Eugene: Cascade,

2011

.

———. Neither Jew nor Greek: A Contested Identity. CITM. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,

2015

.

Gilbert, Greg. What is the Gospel? Wheaton: Crossway,

2010

.

Green, Joel B. Gospel of Luke. NICNT. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,

1997

.

Gupta, Nijay K. Paul and the Language of Faith. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,

2020

.

Kennard, Douglas W. The Gospel. Eugene, OR: Cascade,

2017

.

Knowles, Andrew. The Bible Guide. England: Lion Hudson,

2006

.

McKnight, Scot. The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited. Grand Rapids: Zondervan,

2011

.

Morris, Leon. The Gospel According to John. Rev. ed. NICNT. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,

1995

.

Seglenieks, Chris. Johannine Belief and Graeco-Roman Devotion: Reshaping Devotion for John’s Graeco-Roman Audience. WUNT

2

.

528

. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,

2020

.

Wright, N. T. Simply Good News: Why the Gospel is News and What Makes It Good. New York: Harper One,

2015

.

1

. I am immensely grateful to