RIGHT or WRONG? Gospel ‘of’ or ‘about’

Posted: 3/16/07

RIGHT or WRONG?
Gospel 'of' or 'about'

I just read about a distinction that has been made between the gospel of Jesus and the gospel about Jesus. I’m still puzzled. What’s the difference?

The difference between the two ideas is in the prepositions “of” and “about.”

“Of” is used to describe the whole, the entirety of an entity. “About” can be used to refer to or describe something that is nearly, almost or around an idea but is not the essence of the matter itself.

Therefore, the gospel of Jesus is what Christians consider to be the true, actual core matters of the gospel, as recorded in the Bible, particularly in the four New Testament Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The gospel about Jesus is an interpretation of the gospel of Jesus, an attempt to determine the meaning of the biblical writings and apply that to life.

The core matters of the gospel of Jesus are found especially in the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. The gospel of Jesus is lived out for us as Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us, calling us to transform our lives through the approach that he sets out.

This approach calls us, for example, to love those around us because we ourselves are loved by God (Matthew 25:31-46, John 13:34-35) and see the world and our place in it in a radically new and different way because the kingdom of God is at hand (Mark 1:14-15, Luke 9:23-27).

Someone’s gospel about Jesus—mine, yours or anyone’s—on the other hand, may be done with the best of intentions. But it is still, even at its best, an interpretation, not the gospel of Jesus.

At their worst, many gospels about Jesus have turned out to be gross misinterpretations of the gospel of Jesus. One such example is the cruelty poured out upon the world by the Ku Klux Klan, which bases a good deal of its belief system upon the gospel of Jesus, as well as some of the Bible. For instance, the symbol of the Klan includes a blood drop, which is thought by some to represent the blood of Jesus shed for one particular race of people. This interpretation, of course, runs contradictory to the message of Jesus.

The gospel about Jesus that the Ku Klux Klan has created teaches us a couple of important lessons. One is we should never blindly accept the interpretations of others as being faithful to the themes of the gospel of Jesus. In his book, Spirit Ethics, Paul Jersild cautions us along these lines, noting that too often Christian organizations base their identities upon what they think are solid, biblical truths but actually end up being far from what Jesus intends for his followers to look like.

Another lesson is that we cannot select certain parts of the gospel of Jesus we like but then ignore other parts, missing out on what the gospel of Jesus is as a whole.

We must be careful to avoid the danger of twisting the gospel of Jesus to look as we want it to. Rather, the gospel of Jesus should influence our lives and our gospels about Jesus.

The fundamental values of the gospel of Jesus are to direct and guide all we are and all we are about.

Brian Edwards

Minister with youth

First Baptist Church, Hamilton

Right or Wrong? is sponsored by the T.B. Maston Chair of Christian Ethics at Hardin-Simmons University's Logsdon School of Theology. Send your questions about how to apply your faith to btillman@hsutx.edu.