What Is the Gospel, Really? Responding to John Mark Comer and Scot McKnight

This transcript has been lightly edited from an automated transcription for clarity and readability. While we've worked to preserve each speaker's words faithfully, errors may remain.

1. 00:00

   John Mark Comer

   When I press on people, what most people mean by that is, why don't you preach a Calvinistic view of the atonement?

2. 00:07

   Michael Horton

   Okay, there's no Calvinistic view of the atonement. There is a classical Christian doctrine of the atonement. Perhaps what he means is substitutionary atonement, Jesus dying for our sins and being raised for our justification. And that is hardly a minor point in the Gospels.

3. 00:24

   John Mark Comer

   Or why don't you end your sermons with an appeal to put your hand up and go to heaven when you die?

4. 00:29

   Michael Horton

   Yeah, that's not in the Gospels.

5. 00:31

   John Mark Comer

   People will come up to me, in particular when I travel, and say, hey, I've been listening to your teaching around discipleship, apprenticeship to Jesus, formation, whatever. I have never heard anybody talk about this before.

6. 00:42

   Interviewer of Comer

   What a tragedy, mate.

7. 00:44

   Michael Horton

   Definitely went to different churches, I guess, because I heard discipleship all the time. It's not just following Jesus' example. It is listening to Jesus tell us who he is and what he's come to do.

8. 00:59

   Scot McKnight

   The guy in sandals in Galilee who shows up in the Gospels, and we have to begin there with his message to comprehend what the gospel actually is. So I think Jesus articulated the gospel in an egocentric framework, that he was the center of what he was saying, and that it is an encounter with Jesus that the Gospel is unleashed for the power that it can accomplish.

9. 01:25

   Michael Horton

   I could not agree more. The gospel is Jesus. It's not just about Jesus. Jesus is the gospel. He is the good news incarnate.

10. 01:44

    Michael Horton

    You've probably heard of John Mark Comer. He's a former pastor from Portland, Oregon, and he's the author of some very popular Christian books. He's particularly influential among Gen Z. Across Christian college campuses, students are devouring his work. Professor Brad East writes, “my students appear not only to be reading him, but to be reading no one else. Once it was Lewis and Chesterton, then Schaeffer and Stott and Packer, then Piper and Keller. Now it's Comer's world, and we're all just living in it.” Comer also has some criticisms of the gospel-centered movement and of the Reformed tradition in particular, and we'll be listening to some of those criticisms as we go along. It's also stated that he's greatly influenced by New Testament scholar Scott McKnight. I know Scot, and we recently just contributed to a book together called Five Views on the Gospel. We're going to take a look at some of what Scott says in this episode as well.

11. 02:44

    John Mark Comer

    I also think that, you know, tragically, many people have been in American churches for decades and have never really been well taught in a robust kingdom view of the gospel. Like, one of the really sad things I hear a lot is people will come up to me, in particular when I travel, and say, hey, I've been listening to your teaching around discipleship, apprenticeship to Jesus, formation, whatever. I've been a Christian for 20 years, 25 years, 35 years. I have never heard anybody talk about this before.

12. 03:18

    Interviewer of Comer

    What a tragedy, mate.

13. 03:21

    John Mark Comer

    And what I'm talking about is basic stuff. This is what the word disciple means. This is what it means to disciple under Jesus.

14. 03:26

    Second Interviewer of Comer

    Feels rudimentary and elementary to you, but yeah.

15. 03:28

    John Mark Comer

    Jesus, kingdom of God, the gospel of the kingdom. This is basic cursory reading of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John stuff. People in good solid Bible churches for 30 years, and this is new information to them. So don't underestimate the power of just preaching discipleship to Jesus.

16. 03:46

    Michael Horton

    Definitely went to different churches, I guess, because I heard discipleship all the time. There were books on discipleship. Dallas Willard's books were devoured. Not only Willard, but many other writers were engaging this topic of discipleship. Essentially, a disciple is a follower. There were disciples of various rabbis who would not only sit and listen, but would follow the rabbi to see how the rabbi actually applied the teachings that were given. And people followed Jesus even when they didn't quite understand who he was or what his mission was, the disciples followed him anyway, knowing that he had the words of eternal life. But see, that's just it. They followed him because they knew he had the words of eternal life, as Peter said in John 6. These are hard teachings, and who can listen to them? But we know that you're the Holy One of God who has the words of eternal life. And so it's not just following Jesus' example, It is listening to Jesus tell us who he is and what he's come to do. Discipleship entails learning, not just by watching and by following an example, but by hearing the words of eternal life from the Messiah himself.

17. 05:18

    John Mark Comer

    Today, we kick off an eight-week summer practice of preaching the gospel. Not a year late, but just the right time. Come on, you know it. I'm not a Calvinist, but maybe I am right now. I don't know. Now, to start with the rest of our time this morning, we need to ask a very simple question to open this teaching series. And that is, what is the gospel? Now, that may sound like a stupid question to you. You may be thinking, what are you—like, don't waste my time on that. I know what the gospel is. But if I were to go around the room with a mic and have 10 different people here stand up and say, hey, articulate the gospel to me in 30 seconds, I would likely get 10 different summaries. Not wildly different, but kind of sort of different. Is the gospel that Jesus died on the cross for my sins so that I can go to heaven when I die? Is it the gospel that Jesus can do it but you can't? And so put your faith in him? Is it Jesus come to dismantle the hierarchy of oppression? Is it Jesus came to make you healthy, wealthy? I mean, what is the gospel? Well, the best place to start with that is, what is the gospel that Jesus himself preached? If we don't start with the gospel that Jesus preached, we may very well end up with a gospel that Jesus did not preach. New Testament scholar Scot McKnight, in his excellent book, The King Jesus Gospel, makes a very simple point that blew my mind. He writes, “the Gospels are the gospel.” This is what they pay me the big bucks for. This is why I went to seminary, right here. Meaning, the entire story open in your lap, from Mark chapter one verse one all the way to the end, the last paragraph, all of it is the gospel.

18. 07:08

    Michael Horton

    This is a really important point. Because on one hand you can agree, on the other hand disagree depending on what you mean by gospel. There's a very good reason why historically churches of the Reformation have distinguished between the gospel in the broader sense and the gospel in the narrower sense. Yes, certainly the whole point of the evangelists is to evangelize. The whole point of the four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—is to proclaim Christ as the Savior of the world. But not everything in the four Gospels is gospel. For example, Jesus summarizes the law by saying, “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus gives myriad commands. The Sermon on the Mount is chock-full of commands. Jesus gave commands throughout his whole ministry. That's not the gospel in the narrower sense. In other words, it's in the Gospels, but it's not the good news of who Jesus is and that he has come to save us. In fact, much of what Jesus says is law, as I said, is command that is meant to show us our hearts, to expose our motives, to demonstrate to us that we haven't kept it so that we will look to him for salvation.

19. 08:45

    John Mark Comer

    This is simple but revolutionary. It means the gospel is likely much bigger and deeper and longer than many of us were led to believe, and it could be even a little bit different. I regularly get asked, John Mark, why don't you preach the gospel?

20. 09:00

    Michael Horton

    Well, if you often get asked, John Mark, why don't you preach the gospel? That may be sort of a problem because if the gospel is discipleship, then essentially the gospel is law. The gospel is command. The gospel is something we do, not the good news of what Christ has done for us.

21. 09:22

    John Mark Comer

    And that, I'm happy to admit, that's a weakness in my preaching. But when I press on people, what most people mean by that is, why don't you preach a Calvinistic view of the atonement?

22. 09:33

    Michael Horton

    Okay, there's no Calvinistic view of the atonement. There is a classical Christian doctrine of the atonement. Perhaps what he means is substitutionary atonement, Jesus dying for our sins and being raised for our justification, and that is hardly a minor point in the Gospels.

23. 09:50

    John Mark Comer

    Or why don't you end your sermons with an appeal to put your hand up and go to heaven when you die?

24. 09:55

    Michael Horton

    Yeah, that's not in the Gospels.

25. 09:58

    John Mark Comer

    But my understanding of the gospel is anytime I preach Jesus, anytime I announce anything about Jesus—his birth, his death, his incarnation, his teachings, his miracles, his parables, his resurrection, his ascension to the right hand of the Father, the coming of the Holy Spirit, the great tradition of discipleship thousands of years old—in his name, I am preaching the gospel of Jesus.

26. 10:18

    Michael Horton

    No, what you're preaching is following Jesus. The gospel is the basis for our following Jesus. Remember what, what Paul says in Romans 12, in view of God's mercies, which he's been talking about for the rest of the earlier chapters, in view of all this that God has done for us, present your bodies as a living sacrifice. That's really what discipleship is, presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice, following Jesus. In fact, including following Jesus' example, following Jesus' commands. But that's not the gospel. I can't follow Jesus well enough to be assured that I'm included in God's family. I can only know that I belong to God in Christ because he saved me, because of what he's done, not because of how well I've followed.

27. 11:12

    John Mark Comer

    And if you search for some of the most popular summaries of the gospel in the American church, such as what Dr. Gary Brashears calls the John 3:16 gospel, which is basically you're a sinner going to hell, but Jesus died on the cross for your sins so that you can go to heaven when you die. If you search for that in the gospel in front of you, you are hard-pressed to find anything remotely close to that in any of the four gospels of Jesus.

28. 11:41

    Michael Horton

    Well, he's quoted John 3:16 in the gospel, the fourth Gospel. So clearly, one can't say that there's nothing remotely close to that in the Gospels. In fact, John says the whole purpose of his Gospel is so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ and in believing have life through his name. Now let's review some of what Scot McKnight has to say. This is from a panel that we did together recently for Zondervan for our book that we did together, What Is the Gospel?

29. 12:16

    Scot McKnight

    I wanted to know why the first four books of the New Testament are called the Gospel. And I believe that they are called the Gospel—a gospel—because they are the Gospel. And this led me to my major conclusion that 1 Corinthians 15 is fleshed out in the gospel sermons of the book of Acts, and the Gospels flesh out the gospel sermons in the book of Acts. They filled the lines in so that the gospel is the story about Jesus Christ. It is not, in that sense, I would pose, justification or justice or Jesus.

30. 12:58

    Michael Horton

    See, this is a false dichotomy. I like Scot McKnight a lot, and I've learned a lot from him. He's so good in pointing out that the gospel is about Jesus. It's not about extraneous thing. It's about Jesus. But what do you mean the gospel is about Jesus? Scot says that the gospel, the good news, is that Jesus is King. The King Jesus gospel. But that really is ambiguous news to me in my sinful condition. Jesus is King. The King has come. Well, has he come in judgment? Is this the last judgment? John the Baptist thought that it was. Is it that finally God is going to come in his righteous wrath and judge everybody on the basis of works? What does it mean for Christ to be king? That's what kings usually do when they take their throne. Well, no. If we follow the story of Jesus, he has delayed the final judgment. So that he can be the king who dies on a cross. This is the king on a cross suffering for his people, not sending them into battle to spill their blood for his realm, but Jesus giving his life for his realm. And this is what you can't separate—forgiveness of sins, justification, new birth, sanctification, glorification. You can't separate these things from the story of Jesus because this is what Jesus himself proclaimed. How many times did Jesus say that the kingdom is not something we build, but something he builds? “I will build the church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” I will build my church. It's my church and I will build it. He told his disciples, fear not. Don't be afraid of the world. I've overcome the world. It is the Father's good pleasure to give you a kingdom. The Great Commission: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them everything that I've commanded you.” And then finally, in the book of Hebrews, we're told that we are receiving a kingdom. It's not a kingdom that, you know, Jesus came to give us a blueprint for how we should bring the kingdom into existence. Rather, it's something that he's giving to us. It's a gift. It's inseparable from the gift of salvation.

31. 15:44

    Scot McKnight

    I don't mean these as dichotomies that cannot be incorporated into one another. I think that the gospel is the story about Jesus that fulfills Israel's story.

32. 15:56

    Michael Horton

    Yeah, but that's exactly it. It fulfills Israel's story, including the sacrificial system laid out in the law, very detailed, and all of them pointing like mirrors directed at the fulfillment in Jesus Christ. So whatever the Jesus story is, it has to fulfill the story of Israel, including the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

33. 16:25

    Scot McKnight

    It is a declaration that Jesus has arrived, that he has lived and taught. He embodied the gospel. He died for our sins. He was raised. He ascended. He's returning again. And this is the Jesus of the gospel.

34. 16:42

    Michael Horton

    This is what I like about Scot's approach. He emphasizes that the gospel is Jesus, the announcement of Jesus' birth, incarnation, life of obedience to the Father, his death on a cross for our sins, his resurrection for our justification. You know, John Murray in his famous book titles it Redemption Accomplished and Applied. There is no dichotomy here. Redemption was accomplished by Christ, these events that he talks about, Scot talks about here, but it's applied to us as well. He was not only crucified, but he was crucified for our sins. He was not only raised, but he was raised for our justification. So Scot says you can't really separate these things, but it seems to me that he almost does and says that really the gospel is not justification and the forgiveness of sins. The gospel is the life of Jesus and what Jesus taught. But what Jesus taught and what Jesus embodied, what Jesus accomplished, included very much the justification of the ungodly and the forgiveness of sins.

35. 18:13

    Scot McKnight

    When I first framed the gospel as talking about Jesus, immediately people kept asking me, what about forgiveness? What about justification? What about redemption? What about this? What about—and I said, I think we have to distinguish between the benefits of the gospel and the gospel itself. And it's not that you can have one without the other. It's that there is a distinction that is made in the pages of the New Testament. And one of my formulas that will be acceptable to theologians, because they like formulaic language that has a little bit of heft to it, is I believe that Christology precedes soteriology in the framing of the gospel.

36. 19:00

    Michael Horton

    This is another point that I really appreciate about Scott's perspective. Could not agree more. Christology comes before soteriology. We have to know who Christ is in order to know the significance of what he accomplished. It's more back and forth. It's more bound up, more dialectical than this comes first, then that comes first. Think of Athanasius in his great book On the Incarnation. In that book, this marvelous church father says that Christ is the sort of Savior that we need. He had to be fully God because only God can save us, but he had to be fully human because it was humans who owed the debt. It was humans who were under the curse. And so he became a curse for us. And so, you know, Athanasius is thinking there not just of Christology and then soteriology, but the kind of savior that we need. And we need him to be God and we need him to be human. So these are, I think, more interinterpreting than Scot allows.

37. 20:14

    Scot McKnight

    It is not an either/or. It is first Christology, then soteriology. But when soteriology frames everything, Jesus becomes an agent of the gospel rather than the subject of the gospel. And so I think that the straightforward talking about Jesus is the gospel. My original response to Michael Horton was more disagreeable than the one that showed up in print. Okay. And it's not because I don't like Michael Horton. I do. I mean, I've known him for a long time and I even read him sometimes. But I really think that we have to begin with Jesus and the person of Jesus. And I don't mean that in an abstract theological way. I mean the guy in sandals in Galilee who shows up in the Gospels. And we have to begin there with his message to comprehend what the gospel actually is. So I think Jesus articulated the gospel in an egocentric framework, is that he was pointing to himself, that he was the center of what he was saying, and that it is an encounter with Jesus that the gospel is unleashed for the power that it can accomplish.

38. 21:30

    Michael Horton

    I could not agree more. The gospel is Jesus. It's not just about Jesus. Jesus is the gospel. He is the good news incarnate.

39. 21:41

    Scot McKnight

    When I read Michael's essay, I thought, oh, this is very Reformed, and this is exactly what I would have expected. But I wanted to say, I want more Jesus in this essay. Now, that's—I said this a little bit more stridently and Jason Maston told me to calm down, but I thought I had a pretty good essay. And I did say to myself, it's going to help sell the book if I, if I get by with some of these polemics.

40. 22:09

    Michael Horton

    Yeah, Scot's great. Yeah, I appreciate engaging with him. And again, as I say, learn something every time we do. I just think that even though he says it's not a dichotomy, he does kind of present a false dilemma. Between Jesus the person and Jesus' work. You can't really distinguish even between the person of Jesus and the work of Jesus, because the work Jesus came to do is essential to his hypostatic union. He is God in flesh, even from the moment of his conception, As Calvin says, he began to win our redemption. His whole life, even beginning as a zygote in the womb of the Virgin Mary, his whole life was redemptive, was salvation, was the gospel. And so, you can't really separate what Jesus says about himself, his person, from what Jesus says he came to do. His work.