The King Jesus Gospel - Around the Web 2

Trevin Wax at Kingdom People posted part one of a two part series about The King Jesus Gospel. Today’s post focused on points of agreement, while tomorrow's will look at his concerns.

“The King Jesus Gospel deserves an award for being the “most marked up” book I’ve read this year. I’ve got all sorts of passages highlighted, with notes in the margins, question marks here and there, exclamation points (both good and bad!), and worn-out pages.”

Also, Ben Witherington shared part one of a dialogue with Scot McKnight. You can read an excerpt below, and find the rest here.

“Witherington:  You talk a lot in this book about the difference between the ‘soterian’  Gospel which is not a full presentation of the Gospel  and what you view as the full Evangelical Gospel.  Can you explain this distinction and what you are wanting to stress by making it?

McKnight: In part that is answered in the first one, but now I can say it differently. The fact is that if  you ask most of us what “gospel” means they will give us something to do with salvation, and that will involved God’s love and grace and holiness and Christ’s atoning death and our need to believe. And if you ask people to present the gospel they will order a rhetoric that seeks to compel people to get saved.

But the gospel – the Greek word is euangelion and we get the word “evangel” and “evangelical” and “evangelism” from that Greek word – cannot be reduced to salvation in the New Testament. So The King Jesus Gospel seeks to show that salvation is not the same as gospel, that salvation needs to be seen as something that flows from gospel, but that gospel is something bigger and different. The gospel is to declare something about Jesus, from whom our salvation comes.”