What is the gospel?
We are excited about CICCU because it is all about the gospel. If you haven’t come across the term ‘gospel’ before, then it’s simply the good news of what God has done for us in his Son, Jesus Christ. There are many ways of explaining the gospel. Here is one way based on Mark’s account of Jesus’ life on earth: Jesus’ Identity: Who was Jesus? Jesus was not merely a good teacher (Mark 10:17-18), Mark presents masses of evidence to show us Jesus’ true identity. Jesus is the Christ (Mark 1:1, 8:29). “Christ” means Messiah, God’s king who had been promised centuries before in the Old Testament (Mark 1:2-3). This king would come and rescue his people. As this king, Jesus claims and acts with the power and authority that belongs to God alone (Mark 2:1-12, 4:35-41, 2:28, 14:61-64). The only explanation that fits the facts is that Jesus is God himself and so we must listen to what he says (Mark 9:2-8). Jesus’ Mission: Why did Jesus come?
The English word “gospel” (from Anglo-Saxon godspel) or “good news” translates the Greek euangelion. Originally in Christian usage it meant the good news of God’s saving act in Jesus Christ, focused on the cross and resurrection (1 Cor. 15:1-11). The term was used in the opening verse of the Gospel of Mark. It signified that the prefacing of the account of Jesus’ death and resurrection with a string of passages or pericopes covering his earlier ministry was a way of proclaiming the good news. The unintended result was that the term became a designation for the literary genre which was created by Mark’s gospel, and it came to be applied to other works of the same genre. The NT contains four gospels-Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Other apocryphal writings, mostly heretical, have been designated as gospels. The gospel in the Episcopal liturgy is the final reading from Holy Scriptures taken from the canonical gospels at the eucharist (BCP, pp. 326, 357). It marks the climax of the liturgy
