Is your gospel too tame?
2 Timothy 1:8 says, “Do not be ashamed…of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, in the power of God.” Paul was often thrown into jail (and eventually killed) for preaching the gospel. Why? Why did people find the good news so objectionable?
If Paul was simply preaching forgiveness, who would object to that? Suppose he preached like this: “Good news! God’s not angry at you, he has already paid for all your sins.”
Who would object to such a message? It’s harmless – innocuous. Pagan religions didn’t say much about sin and forgiveness, and some people might respond to Paul’s message with, “I suppose it’s OK to be forgiven, but I really wasn’t worried about it in the first place.” They might shrug their shoulders and go on their way.
However, Paul is in jail, chained up, threatened with death. Death! Why? What was it about his message that anybody objected to?
One answer comes in an early Christian statement of belief. It is simply, “Jesus is Lord.” The Jewish word Messiah didn’t mean much to a Greek audience, so Paul gave it a functional translation: Jesus is Lord. It’s like saying, Jesus is King.
If you confess that Jesus is Lord, then you will be saved (Romans 10:9). Now, who would object to that sort of message? It would be all the other folks who wanted to be lord, especially Caesar. When Paul preached that Jesus was Lord, he is also saying that Caesar is not.
What is a lord? A lord is someone who has authority to tell us what to do. Caesar claimed the right to tell people what to do; Paul is saying that it is Jesus who actually has that right. It’s a question of allegiance, and that’s what got Paul thrown in jail.
As part of the gospel, he was preaching, Jesus is Lord. He was saying, If you agree with that, then you will be saved. He was definitely not saying that it doesn’t matter whether you believe it. Maybe behind the scenes Jesus will somehow take care of people who don’t believe it, but that was definitely not part of Paul’s message. God’s possible provision for the unevangelized is not part of his message.
Jesus is Lord, and he wants you to believe it. But some people may think, “That doesn’t sound like good news. It’s like preaching: ‘You have someone else to obey.’ What’s good about that?”
Some people want to reserve the word gospel for the good parts of the message, or the parts that people might think are good. The gospel is just about forgiveness. It is a harmless gospel that no one would object to. It has no explanation for why Paul would be arrested, jailed and executed.
That approach also seems to judge Jesus by what human kings are, instead of realizing that human kings need to be judged by what Jesus is. Christ comes not just with judgment of condemnation, but also a judgment of salvation. Paul said that his gospel included the fact that “Christ Jesus judges the secret thoughts of all” (Romans 2:16).
It is actually good news that Jesus is King, that he is Lord, that he has authority over us. Let’s suppose that we are hauled into a courtroom and we are going to be judged based on what we did in this life. Isn’t it good news to find out that the Judge is Jesus?
When we are looking at the final authority for life, isn’t it good news to realize that the King is Jesus? It’s not some human who makes up laws to make himself richer, it’s not some cultural trend that changes from one year to another. No, the authority for all of life is Jesus, and he is totally trustworthy. He gives us good laws, not bad ones.
He has earned our allegiance not with threats of killing us, but by being willing to die for us. He loves us, and as John says, his commandments are not burdensome. They are good for us, just like guardrails on a mountain road are good; they are not restrictions on our freedom.
If salvation is by grace – and it is – then why does Jesus say so much a King who is perfectly righteous, perfectly loving, perfectly able to take care of us in eternity – an eternity in which people live and love and think like Jesus. The gospel says that people need to be transformed to be like Jesus. The gospel tells us to change, and that is good news, and we do not need to be afraid of preaching it.
Titus 2:11-14 does not use the word gospel, but it does use the word grace, and it weaves together grace and command, forgiveness and expectation:
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity [that’s forgiveness] and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds. [that’s command]
The good news is that Jesus is Lord, and he tells us what to do. He loves us even if we fall short, but he loves us enough to tell us that we do fall short. Do we love the people around us well enough to tell them that? Jesus tells us that there is a better way, and we need to do it. God is love, God is grace, and God also tells us what to do. He is good, all the time.
Michael Morrison, GCS News, August 2025