Misunderstanding the Gospel

Michie · Apr 29, 2025

Christians talk a lot about the gospel, but what actually is it?

Christians talk a lot about the gospel, but what actually is it?

An easy answer is that it’s “good news.” That’s what the Greek and Hebrew terms translated gospel mean, and we get the English word gospel from roots that mean “good news.”

But what is the good news that the gospel contains? What is it, specifically?

That’s where things get fuzzy. Christians don’t have a single, clear definition for what the gospel is. There are several different uses for the term.

This is a problem because St. Paul has stern things to say about people who don’t understand the gospel correctly. He writes,

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.
But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.
As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed (Gal. 1:6-9).

In Paul’s view, anyone who has a fundamentally different gospel is to be condemned and ejected from the Christian community. So making sure that you have a correct understanding of the gospel is very important. Yet this is where we run into trouble.

Sometimes people use the term very broadly. For example, GotQuestions states, “The gospel is, broadly speaking, the whole of Scripture.”

Continued below.