What is Gospel Culture?

One // Gospel Defined

What do we mean by the word gospel?

Implicit answer — “Jesus died for my sins so I can go to Heaven”

Gloriously true → gospel is more than a doctrine describing how sinners are forgiven and saved from God’s judgment

Biblical examples:

1 Corinthians 15:1-8, 20-28 — Paul speaks about Jesus dying for our sins, but also emphasizes how the death and resurrection of Jesus abolishes the powers of sin and death, establishing the rule and reign of God.

Matthew 3:2, 4:17 — The repeated proclamation from John the Baptist and Jesus is to repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.

Acts 10:43, 2:32-36 — Proclamation of the apostles in acts is not only that Jesus has died for the forgiveness of sins, but that he has been enthroned as Lord over all.

Sum total → Gospel is not advice about something we should do. It is the announcement of what God has done.

Gospel as the Announcement of Good News

N.T. Wright — “The gospel itself refers to the proclamation that Jesus, the crucified and risen Messiah, is the one, true and only Lord of the world.”

The gospel is the royal announcement that God, the rightful King, has come to reclaim and restore his fallen creation by defeating the powers of sin and death, and establishing his gracious rule and reign over his people.

Heart of the Christian message = not an invitation to a private religious experience with God, but an announcement that Jesus is King

Jesus is King → not a “new sheriff in town” → cosmic restoration of all things

D.A. Carson — says the New Testament understands gospel to be “the embracing category that holds much of the Bible together, and takes Christians from lostness and alienation from God all the way through conversion and discipleship to the consummation, to resurrection bodies, and to the new heaven and the new earth.”

Gospel is not less than personal salvation → refers to the overarching story of forgiveness, justification, union with Christ, transformation by the Spirit, reconciliation with others, and the renewal of creation.

Gospel as Culture

If this reality of cosmic restoration of all things true → signals not only a change of powers, but the institution of a new reality for the people of God.

Believing the Gospel ≠ accepting sum total of right Christian beliefs → submitting to the rule and reign of Christ “on earth as it is in Heaven”

Gospel DOCTRINE (what we believe to be true about God’s gracious work) → creates a CULTURE (how we live as people submitted to the rule and reign of Jesus)

Gospel is not only something we believe, but a new reality that we live.

Two // Gospel Doctrine without Gospel Culture

Danger → It is possible to affirm gospel doctrine while failing to embody gospel culture.

Galatians 2:14 “But when I saw that they were deviating from the truth of the gospel, I told Cephas in front of everyone, “If you, who are a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel Gentiles to live like Jews?””

Assumption — what we believe shapes how we live (ideas have consequences!)

Titus 2:11–14 “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, instructing us to deny godlessness and worldly lusts and to live in a sensible, righteous, and godly way in the present age, while we wait for the blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. He gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to cleanse for himself a people for his own possession, eager to do good works.”

Problem with not embodying gospel culture ≠ we are hypocrites… but that if our lives do not embody the truth we claim, then we have missed the gospel altogether.

1 John 1:6 “If we say, “We have fellowship with him,” and yet we walk in darkness, we are lying and are not practicing the truth.”

1 John 2:4 “The one who says, “I have come to know him,” and yet doesn’t keep his commands, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.”

Believing the gospel → embodying in the reality of God’s rule and reign in our lives

Philippians 1:27 “Just one thing: As citizens of heaven, live your life worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or am absent, I will hear about you that you are standing firm in one spirit, in one accord, contending together for the faith of the gospel.”

If fail to see the gospel as an all-encompassing reality (a whole culture or way of being) and define it too narrowly as something we just believe, we get a version of the gospel that…

Is reduced to a doctrinal belief of a mere affirmation of ideas about Jesus.

Begins with the problem of sin and misses the goodness of Creation.

Emphasizes personals salvation but misses the social and cosmic aspects of God’s work.

Undervalues the centrality of critical themes of union with Christ, transformation into his likeness, and living according to the power of the Spirit.

Can’t meaningfully underwrite unity with other Christians particularly in the nonessentials.

Risk → community that emphasizes gospel doctrine without pursuing gospel culture is in danger of becoming an ANXIOUS system. In this system of “gospel as mere doctrine,” anxious relationships emerge because…

We feel the need to justify ourselves through comparison and posturing.

We think belonging is based on affirmation of others and shared knowledge.

Shibboleths are used to signal that you are safe and belong.

Strangers are viewed with suspicion as potential threats to shared orthodoxy.

Members conform to norms established by group consensus.

Challenges to ideas can be seen as challenges to one’s identity and sense of belonging.

Members who stray for the group’s norms experience relational ostracization.

Three // Gospel Culture as a Way of Life Together

Invitation → embrace the gospel as a new culture or social reality for the people of God

Working idea — Gospel culture is the shared life that emerges when a community increasingly trusts the good news of Jesus and lets that good news reshape everything ourselves and our relationships including our instincts, emotions, habits, and common mission.

Gospel ≠ something we affirm but something that forms us both individually and collectively; those are two important movements to understand how the gospel is not just an individual culture we embraced but a shared culture among the people of God

At the individual level → the Gospel forms a new kind of person

Answers the deep questions beneath our lives:

What makes me valuable?

What does it take to belong?

What anchors my identity?

Why do people hurt, reject, or leave me?

What is the purpose of suffering?

What does a good life actually look like?

If we answer those questions outside of the gospel (even functionally), we become anxious in relationship — we look to performance, approval, control, comfort, possessions, family, work, theological knowledge, or moral superiority to give us what only Christ can give.

Anxious people who aren’t living the reality of the gospel themselves → anxious communities.

Embracing the gospel as an encompassing reality causes me to believe deeply that…

I do not have to justify myself because I am justified in Christ.

I do not have to perform for belonging because I am welcomed in Christ.

I do not have to hide weakness because grace meets me there.

I do not have to treat others as threats because the gospel equalizes us all before God.

I do not have to create my own meaning because my life is caught up in God’s renewing work in the world.

So gospel culture begins with people whose deepest sense of self is being anchored in and is always experiencing the good news of Jesus.

At the collective level → individuals experiencing and embodying the gospel as a new reality for the whole of their lives belong to community that controverts the anxious model of community

An anxious religious culture is constantly trying to figure out who is in and who is out, who is safe and who is suspicious, who has the right language, who knows the right things, who belongs, and who should be kept at a distance.

Communities formed by gospel culture are not based on fear, performance, suspicion, or self-justification.

Rather, they are relational environments of grace, abundance, honesty, conviction (yes!), but also non-anxiousness because:

The gospel equalizes—i.e. all are alienated from God under sin, all can receive reconciliation through Christ alone. 

The gospel is not a human invention and achieves God’s purposes for it. 

The gospel gives us what we are expected to give to one another.

The gospel helps us understand the spiritual realities that impact our world, i.e. sin, idolatry, blessing, redemption, kingdom, vocation, etc. 

The gospel is about salvation, but biblically understood salvation (sozo) is associated with healing and the scope of salvation goes beyond the human all the way to the creation.

The point here is not to establish how we can become “nicer” Christians who can get together and sing kumbaya — but how we can be a people continually renewed in the all-encompassing good news that Jesus is king over all.

Collective question — What kind of church happens when the good news moves from being merely a doctrine we affirm to a reality we inhabit?

A gospel culture is a community where people are increasingly able to be honest without fear, corrected without despair, loved without performance, patient without passivity, and unified without pretending everyone is the same.

It is a community where the truth of Jesus creates the texture of life together.