Christians are people of the Gospel. But what is the gospel, exactly? Like many evangelicals, I grew up thinking that the gospel was the claim that Jesus died for our sins, full stop.
That description is correct in what it affirms but wrong in what it leaves out, for the Gospel is so much more. It is the story of the Kingdom of God breaking into the world, the story of how, day by day, his will is coming to be done on earth as it is in heaven. And how, by his grace, the church occasionally has some role to play in it all.
We evangelicals view ourselves as gospel people, as those who define ourselves by the good news of what God is doing in the world. Ironically, often our failure is that we don’t think about the Gospel in the grand terms that it deserves, as God’s world-transforming intent to make all things new. In this episode of The Tentative Apologist Podcast we explore the meaning of gospel and kingdom as we sit down with Danielle Strickland, a major in the Salvation Army and the Corps Officer at Crossroads Community in Edmonton, Alberta. Major Strickland is a world-renown evangelist and social activist, or as I prefer to say, a gospel activist. She spends her time preaching the gospel by fighting for social justice with a special focus on fighting human trafficking.
