The issue remember is that it is claimed that it is wrong “to define ‘the gospel’ as something other than the specific announcement of the forgiveness of sins and declaration of righteousness solely by Christ’s merits.”
In Acts 13, we see another instance of what we find all over Acts, that preaching the gospel means declaring that Jesus is Lord:
Brothers, sons of the family of Abraham, and those among you who fear God, to us has been sent the message of this salvation. For those who live in Jerusalem and their rulers, because they did not recognize him nor understand the utterances of the prophets, which are read every Sabbath, fulfilled them by condemning him. And though they found in him no guilt worthy of death, they asked Pilate to have him executed. And when they had carried out all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead, and for many days he appeared to those who had come up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are now his witnesses to the people. And we bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers, this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus, as also it is written in the second Psalm,
“‘You are my Son,
today I have begotten you.’And as for the fact that he raised him from the dead, no more to return to corruption, he has spoken in this way,
“‘I will give you the holy and sure blessings of David.’
Therefore he says also in another psalm,
“‘You will not let your Holy One see corruption.’
For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep and was laid with his fathers and saw corruption, but he whom God raised up did not see corruption. Let it be known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses. Beware, therefore, lest what is said in the Prophets should come about:
“‘Look, you scoffers,
be astounded and perish;
for I am doing a work in your days,
a work that you will not believe, even if one tells it to you.’”
Here again we have a declaration that Jesus is king (greater than David) by virtue of his resurrection. Psalm 2 is appealed to, and is worth quoting in fuller context:
Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying,
“Let us burst their bonds apart
and cast away their cords from us.”He who sits in the heavens laughs;
the Lord holds them in derision.
Then he will speak to them in his wrath,
and terrify them in his fury, saying,
“As for me, I have set my King
on Zion, my holy hill.”I will tell of the decree:
The Lord said to me, “You are my Son;
today I have begotten you.
Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
and the ends of the earth your possession.
You shall break them with a rod of iron
and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”Now therefore, O kings, be wise;
be warned, O rulers of the earth.
Serve the Lord with fear,
and rejoice with trembling.
Kiss the Son,
lest he be angry, and you perish in the way,
for his wrath is quickly kindled.
Blessed are all who take refuge in him.
What is noticeable here is that the “good news” which Paul preaches ends the same way as Psalm 2, offering both salvation and forgiveness and warning of wrath for unbelief.
This follows, incidentally, what we read in Acts 4 where Israel is seen as among the group condemned in Psalm 2:
When they were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them. And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, “Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit,
“‘Why did the Gentiles rage,
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers were gathered together,
against the Lord and against his Anointed’—
for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.”
Notice, how well this message fits with the way Paul later describes the Gospel in Acts 20:
But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. And now, behold, I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again.
Notice also how much all this works with the sermon on Acts 2 which, while not specifically called “the preaching of the Gospel” in the immediate context, is obviously nothing less than that. Again, Jesus is declared to be Lord and is the basis for both warning and offer. In this case, the whole good news/bad news dynamic is especially different from the desire to define the Gospel in a reductionistic way because the story of Jesus’ death is itself an accusation about breaking the Sixth Command and violating basic “natural law” justice.
The Gospel of the Kingdom, like we find in the Gospels themselves, involves judgment and teaching about Jesus as judge of the world, elevated to that position by his resurrection from the dead.
Next we will look at what Paul’s epistles say.
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Mark,
Many thanks for your blogging.
It isn’t clear to me that your criticisms here are on target.
Horton’s concern, as I read it, is to distinguish between creation and redemption and between general revelation and special revelation. In his contrast of law and gospel in paragraph 3, the contrast is between the moral truths known to all and something defined by the “incarnate Son’s life, death, and resurrection”. In the 6th paragraph, Horton’s concern is regarding “the inherent dignity of life, marriage, and liberty” as the gospel. Why is this a concern? The central point of the following paragraph, the 7th, is that there are two revelations — general and special. To equate “the inherent dignity of life, marriage, and liberty” with the gospel is to “confuse the law and the gospel” (8th paragraph) because it confuses general and special revelation.
Horton seems fine with defining the gospel as something that includes more than justification. In the 3rd paragraph the gospel is delineated in terms of the Son’s incarnation, life, death, and resurrection. In the last paragraph the gospel tells of deliverance from the tyranny of sin, which arguably includes (for him) sanctification and glorification (and final judgement?).
The variety of ways in which he describes the gospel shows, I think, that the definition in the first sentence of the 5th paragraph is not meant to bear the weight you’re putting on it. In fact, it fails Horton’s own test found at the end of the previous paragraph: it says nothing of justification being “through faith alone”. The point of the definition is to stand for a classic, confessional, Protestant definition of the gospel, denied once by the ECT document and now, in a different way, by the Manhattan Declaration (so he believes).
At any rate, I don’t see Horton contrasting the gospel and the fact that, as Horton indicates in the last paragraph, second sentence, the Christian is one bound to the law of God as a rule for loving our neighbors. Since he understands this rule to be given in creation such a contrast would seem to be gnostic.
Best regards,
Scott