What is the gospel?  How did Jesus and the New Testament writers define it?  Is it a simple formula to get out of hell and go to heaven when I die?  Or is it much deeper and richer than we have been led to believe?  Mark’s biography (or gospel) details the story of how God became king, showing us what Jesus means by the gospel: “the time has come, the kingdom of God has come near” (Mark 1:15).

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The Good News is that the one true God has now taken charge of the world, in and through Jesus and his death and resurrection. The ancient hopes have indeed been fulfilled, but in a way nobody imagined. God‘s plan to put the world right has finally been launched… the ancient sickness that had crippled the whole world, and humans with it, has been cured at last, so that new life can rise up in its place. Life has come to life and is pouring out like a mighty river into the world, in the form of a new power, the power of love. The good news was, and is, that all this has happened in and through Jesus; that one day it will happen, completely, and utterly to all creation; and that we humans, every single one of us, whoever we are, can be caught up in that transformation here and now. This is the Christian gospel. Do not allow yourself to be fobbed off with anything less. — N.T. Wright