Miles McKee Ministries

Box 353, Ponte Vedra Beach, Jacksonville, Florida 32004-0353

PO Box 8, New Ross, County Wexford, Ireland

The Gospel is about a Person - Jesus Christ

The Gospel is all about Jesus Christ. Well of course we all say amen to that. But, if the Gospel is about Jesus, we need to realize then it is not about you and it is not about me. I’ll say it again, It is not about you and it is not about me! It is not about Jesus coming into our hearts and making us new, It is neither about our spiritual growth nor our spiritual development. The believer, his progress and welfare, are not the focus of the Gospel since the Gospel puts the Lord Jesus Christ firmly at center stage. In the Gospel, the spotlight is upon Jesus, not the believer. Of course we believers enjoy the benefits of the gospel, or as the old timers called them “Gospel Mercies” such as acquittal from all charges of sin and of course, because of the Gospel we can have the wonderful new life in Christ. But the Gospel is not about our new life or what we are doing or about how saved we are, The Gospel is about what Christ has accomplished on our behalf in history.

Although Christ perfectly represented us as our substitute in His life, death, burial and resurrection and although, as he lived, He lived for us and even though when He died He died for us, the Gospel is not about us. The Gospel is primarily the good news of what Christ Jesus has done and accomplished in time and history. It is not about the mercies we receive as a result of the Gospel. Christ Jesus and His finished work are the center of the Gospel, not His people and not how we benefit from his work. The great 19th century Anglican Bishop of Ohio, Charles McIlvaine, said;

Since the Gospel is about Jesus, the Gospel is therefore not about the sinner. Of course Jesus died for sinners but the Gospel is not sinner centered it is Christ centered. The gospel is not about the horror of sin or the penalty that sinners will pay for sin. The gospel is neither about God’s hatred of sin nor His holiness. The Gospel however is about the doing and dying of Christ and His accomplishments on behalf of God and sinners. Yes it is true that the Gospel only really makes sense when the Holiness of God and the horrors of sin are understood but the holiness of God and the horrors of sin are, strictly speaking, not the Gospel.

So the Gospel is not about you, it is not about me and it’s not about the sinner.
The gospel is about Jesus Christ!

The Gospel, therefore, is not about the Father

The God of the Bible is One God; yet, although He is One He is revealed as triune. We know him as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The one triune God had involvement with the Gospel but the Gospel is “Concerning His Son.” (Rom 1:3). The gospel is, therefore, not about the Father. Of course the Father is involved in the Gospel since He planned it and sent His Son but the Gospel is about the doing, dying and resurrection of Christ the Son. It is true that the Son is a visible representation of the Father and that He perfectly reveals Him and His heart of justice and love but the Gospel is the good news which took place in the Christ event. God clothed himself with humanity, invaded time and space and came to earth to live and die for us in the person of the Son.

Since the gospel is about The Son then we must also conclude that the Gospel is not about the Holy Spirit. But of course the Holy Spirit was actively involved in the Gospel. Jesus was pre-eminently the man of the Spirit. He told His listeners, “The Spirit of the lord is upon me” (LK 4:18). The Spirit led him to the wilderness (LK 4:1). He was conceived by the Spirit (LK 1:35) and of course He offered himself to God through the eternal Spirit (Heb 9:13) But the Gospel is about Christ Jesus and His saving acts on our behalf and not about the present day work of the Holy Spirit.

There are many who hold that the Gospel is about the cross while the “Full Gospel” is about the Holy Spirit and His power in the lives of the believer: but here’s the rub, the gospel of Christ is already full. It is a finished and completed work which is in no respects deficient or lacking. There’s nothing which can be added to it, it wants nothing, needs nothing and is deficient in nothing. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is already the Full Gospel.

The work of the Holy Spirit therefore can neither qualify as the Gospel nor the Full Gospel. The Spirit’s work is an entirely different work altogether. The Holy Spirit works within us but, in the Gospel, Christ has performed and accomplished His work outside of us. Horatius Bonar wisely observes;

Not Regeneration!

Now are you ready for this one? Since the Gospel is the work of Christ for us and not His work in us by His Spirit, when we preach “You must be born again” we are not preaching the Gospel. Being born again or Regeneration (see Vol 3 The Gospel Truth “God’s Really Big Words Made Simple”) is a wonderful truth but it is not the Gospel. Being born again is the work of the Spirit not the work of the Son. Jesus coming into our hearts is not the Gospel but Jesus coming into the world 2000 years ago is. Nowhere in the Bible are we commanded to go and tell people to ask Jesus into their hearts but rather we are commanded to preach the Gospel. That may shake you up a little but I hope it more than shakes you. I hope that it will rock you to your foundations and cause you, if need be, to re-examine your message.

Of course the new birth should be preached but in doing so we should not think we have preached the Gospel. The new birth should be preached in the light of the Gospel but not as the Gospel.

So to recap: The Gospel is not about you, it’s not about me and it’s not about the sinner. Nor is it about the doing and dying of the Father but about the doing and dying of the Son. Likewise, while the Father is glorified in the Gospel, the Gospel is not Father centered nor is it Holy Spirit centered. Jesus is the heart and core of the Gospel!

Now to develop this: Since the Gospel is about Jesus Christ, to proclaim the Gospel we must proclaim who Jesus is and what He has done in the Christ event. We of course can and should proclaim what the Father has done through Christ or what Christ has done by the power of the Spirit---but it is always Christ Jesus who is in the limelight.

A preacher may think he is preaching the Gospel when he’s preaching about the goodness and kindness of the Father but he’s not. If, however, the Father’s goodness and kindness, as demonstrated in by and through Christ, is preached then the gospel is being preached. Likewise he may be preaching on the power of the Holy Spirit and miracles but this is not preaching the Gospel. Indeed the preacher may be telling us how we can have peace, joy and new life but since believers are the center of the message, he is not preaching the Gospel.

In The Gospel God Gives us a revelation of Himself

We can not preach the gospel without declaring Christ’s identity. He is God manifest in the flesh (1 Tim 3:16). He was God walking around Palestine as a man ( For further details see Vol 2 of the Gospel Truth Trilogy “What’s All This Nonsense About Jesus Being God? ). If a preacher refuses to preach Christ’s true identity then he is no Gospel preacher. If there is no Gospel, there is therefore no salvation for his listeners. When we preach who Christ is as God of very God and who He is as the representative man then we are preaching the Gospel. We may not be preaching evangelistically, we may not be trying to get lost sinners saved, rather we are trying to get saved sinners saved. Both sinners and saints are saved by the Gospel. When I say the saints get saved I am referring to salvation in its broadest biblical sense. I don’t mean the saints get Justified; saints are already justified. But salvation is much bigger than Justification (see Vol 3 of The Gospel Truth, God’s Really Big Words Made Simple)!

We can not preach everything there is to preach about Him …simply because we don’t know everything there is to know about Him but when we preach Christ Jesus the Lord we are preaching the Gospel. If every Church in America spent each week preaching about Jesus, His titles, His excellencies, His character, His offices, His work, his death, resurrection and exaltation then I firmly believe we would soon have a changed nation. Tragically the people of God are starved for Gospel preaching. I didn’t say they were starved for preaching or for sermons bur rather for Gospel sermons. They are starved for Christ centered sermons where the Gospel is proclaimed, expounded and applied. The Apostle Paul could say in New Testament days, “We preach not ourselves but Christ Jesus the Lord” (2 Cor. 4:5). How many pastors can say the same today?

It is not too extreme to say, the gospel is Jesus; or to put it another way, the Gospel is God’s good news about Himself revealed in His Son. Jesus is God’s good news from Heaven. The Gospel brings not only good news about what God has done about our predicament but also gives us good news about God Himself. Because of the Gospel, we can learn about the very character of God.

For example, we would not realize how much God hates sin if it were not for the cross. It is the Gospel which best illustrates God’s hatred of sin. The God who is love is the God who is holy. But how can we clearly understand that unless we see His hatred for sin demonstrated at the cross of Christ? We would not realize the extent of God’s holiness were it not for the cross. As Barnhouse said, “If you say that God is love without realizing that God is hate of sin you have no Gospel at all because you do not have God. The people who teach that God is love with out teaching that God is also hate of sin have in reality another God who is Satan with a mask on” (Barnhouse, Commentary on Romans).

Each day in the Old Testament Temple, God’s hatred of sin was seen in the sacrifices. God, being Holy, can no more endorse sin than He can commit it. But these sacrifices were merely shadows of the reality which was to come. And only in the Gospel do we see the fulfillment of these Old Testament types. Only in the Gospel are we caused to face the horror of sin. God spared not His Son but delivered Him up as an offering which took away holy wrath. Christ, “hung on the cross like a disinherited son while he appeared in the rank and garb of a sinner” (Stephen Charnock). Hanging there, the Lamb who knew no sin, calls out and cries, “My God My God why have you forsaken me”.. By the way, this is the first time in His ministry that Christ had ever called the Father by the title of ‘God’. All through His life he had simply called Him Father. But there at the cross Christ took the place of His sinful people taking their sin and all the separation that goes along with it. Listen to Him cry out in tortured agony, “My God my God why have you forsaken me?” Had there been another way to reconcile us do you not think the Father would have taken it? The cross was awful; it was scandalous! Yet it reveals the heart of God not only in His deep love for us but also in the deep hatred of sin which so offended His holiness.

So the first essential element of the Gospel is that the Gospel is about Jesus Christ. That means the Gospel is not about you or me or about the sinner or The Father or about the Holy Spirit. In the Gospel we get a revelation of God himself in the person of the Son Jesus Christ.

Now let’s look at the second essential element of the Gospel.


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© Miles McKee

The Gospel happened in the Past