in Christ: Andrew Fountain's blog

What is the Gospel?

Back when I was in my early 20’s a friend asked me how she could become a Christian. I thought I had all the answers and had read all the best Reformed books, but was frustrated at the questions she kept coming up with. There seemed to be a mis-match between the books I read and how it was done in the New Testament.

Years later, when I came to do my M.Div thesis, I thought “this is a chance to really come to grips with this question.” I narrowed the subject down to Gospel Preaching in Acts✽ and systematically analysed the contents of the book.

• I found there were 49 places where there was explicit or implicit preaching of the Gospel
  
  • They are all tabulated here: Catalogue of Gospel Declarations in Acts (It helps if you have a wide screen, and if you want to print it out, try using landscape.)
• I narrowed the list down to places where there was substantial content recorded and was left with:
  
  • 5 addresses by Peter
  • 2 addresses by Stephen and Philip
  • 7 addresses by Paul
• I was surprised by:
  
  • the remarkably strong patterns of similarities between these messages
  • and how they differed from preaching today
  • for example, Peter could not preach without the resurrection being one of his points

I recently decided to preach a series on the Gospel, both for unbelievers present and to help Newlife Church's evangelism. The thesis didn’t include the preaching of Jesus, but it is extremely important to see the organic relationship between what Jesus preached (no mention of his crucifixion) and the later, more fully developed message. This redemptive-historical approach helps us identify what is core to the Gospel message.

• Here are the series titles:
  
  1. The Gospel Message of Jesus
  2. The Preaching of Peter
  3. Paul Preaching to Pagans
  4. Paul gives his Testimony (and how to give ours)
  5. How do we Preach Repentance Today?
  6. What do you tell a person do to become a Christian?
  7. The Power of the Spirit (the Gospel and the supernatural)

I will post links to the notes and audio as they become available

✽Thesis on Gospel Preaching in Acts available online here

Updated on 2009-10-05 (r.82) by Andrew Fountain