Which Gospel?

By Arthur Licursi with portions taken from Cornelius Stam

A friend might ask: “Have you heard the good news?” and you reply: “What good news?” Naturally! All good news is not the same.

Yet few people follow this procedure when they read in the Bible the phrase “the gospel” — which simply means “the good news.” They have been erroneously taught that “the gospel is the gospel” and that “there is only one gospel,” but this is simply NOT so in the light of the Bible itself. Let's see what light we can get from the Bible itself.

God has NOT proclaimed only one gospel, one item of good news, down through the ages, but many. He has qualified the word “gospel” by distinctive titles, just as one might label a computer file to distinguish the others, since each file contains different information.

The “gospel of the kingdom” and the “gospel of the grace of God” are two different gospels, they are not the same. Certainly the “gospel of the circumcision ( Israel )” that Peter preached and the “gospel of the uncircumcision (Gentiles)" that Paul preached are very clearly not the same.

Galatians 2:7-8 (KJV) But contrariwise, when they saw that the gospel of the uncircumcision was committed unto me (Paul), as the gospel of the circumcision was unto Peter; ⁸ (For he that wrought effectually in Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision, the same was mighty in me (Paul) toward the Gentiles:)

When we come upon the phrase “the gospel” without any qualifying title, we should immediately ask: “Which gospel?” and invariably the context will provide the answer. Luke 9:6, for example, simply states that the twelve disciples went about “preaching the gospel,” but Verse 2 of the same chapter explains how the Lord had sent them “to preach the kingdom of God” — not a gospel of the cross, but "the kingdom," since He, the King, was in their midst. These disciples could not have engaged in “the preaching of the cross,” as Paul later did, for it was not until at least two years later that the Lord “began” to tell them how He must suffer and die (Matt. 16:21) and Peter “began to rebuke Him” (Ver. 22) and none of the twelve even understood what He was talking about (Luke 18:34).

But whereas “the gospel of the kingdom” had been committed to the twelve while Christ was on earth, “the preaching of the cross” (1 Cor. 1:18, as good news) and “the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24) was later committed to the Apostle Paul and to us .

Today we do not proclaim the kingdom rights of Christ. Rather we proclaim “redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace” (Eph. 1:7).