The Gospel is one of the most important concepts in the Christian faith. Yet, it is also one of the most misunderstood. For years, I thought of the Gospel—as many still do—as John Ortberg puts it, “the minimum requirements for going to Heaven when you die.” It was a ticket to an eternal destination, a transactional arrangement ensuring my post-mortem safety. But as I have come to see, this understanding falls far short of the richness and beauty of the Gospel that Jesus proclaimed. N.T. Wright explains why simply seeing salvation as how to go to Heaven when you die is such a big problem and so relevant to our daily lives:

As long as we see ‘salvation’ in terms of ‘going to heaven when we die’, the main work of the church is bound to be seen in terms of saving souls for that future. But when we see ‘salvation’, as the New Testament sees it, in terms of God’s promised new heavens and new earth, and of our promised resurrection to share in that new, and gloriously embodied, reality—what I have called ‘life after life after death’—then the main work of the church here and now demands to be rethought in consequence.

At this point the well-known slogan of Christian Aid, ‘We believe in life before death’, comes into its own. Life before death is what is threatened, called into question, by the idea that salvation is merely ‘life after death’.[1]

The Gospel, at its heart, is not merely about escaping hell or securing a spot in heaven, although it includes that. (There will come a day when that issue will become the most important issue in your life.) Instead, the gospel is an invitation to life in the Kingdom of God—a reality that begins here and now. Jesus didn’t come simply to prepare us for the afterlife; He came to make this world more like Heaven and show us how to live under the rule and reign of God.

[1] Tom Wright, Surprised by Hope (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2007), 209–210.