the good news: God's saving announcement that, in Jesus Christ, he has acted to rescue and to reign
In the New Testament this word almost always means one thing: the good news about Jesus. It is not advice or instruction but the report of something that has happened. God has:
- kept his promises
- dealt with sin through the death and resurrection of Jesus
- opened his reign to all who trust him
To hear it is to be told news, the way a herald announces a victory already won.
The word carries two closely tied shades that grow from this one core. Most often it names the message itself, its content: what is announced about Christ, the news a person believes and is saved by. But the same word can also stand for the whole undertaking of getting that message out, the labor of preaching and spreading it. When Paul speaks of partnership in the good news, of its advance, or of his service in it, the word has slid from the message to the mission that carries it. The two are inseparable, which is why one word holds both, and in many verses Paul moves between them freely.
The deepest roots of the word lie in the prophet Isaiah, who pictures a herald running over the mountains to announce peace, salvation, and the news that God reigns. The first Christians filled their word with exactly that content. They also did something new with its grammar: where everyone else in the Greek world spoke of good newses in the plural (a victory here, an emperor's birthday there), Christians fixed on the singular, the one good news, signaling that this saving message about Jesus stands alone.
In its first setting the word also rang with public, almost political force. A herald brought good news of a battle won or a new ruler enthroned, and announcements of an emperor's accession used this very word. Against that backdrop the claim that Jesus is Lord and that God's long-promised rescue has arrived sounded like a rival proclamation to Caesar's.
Nuances
Disputed
Which background does the most work in shaping the New Testament noun: the Isaianic herald tradition of Deutero-Isaiah, or the Greco-Roman vocabulary of public proclamation, especially imperial-cult announcements of an emperor's accession or birthday.
- majorityThe decisive background is the prophet Isaiah, mediated through the early Aramaic-speaking church; Paul cites Isaiah 52:7 in Romans 10:15, and the content of the word (peace, salvation, God reigns) matches Isaiah directly, with imperial usage at most a secondary environment.; P. Stuhlmacher, Das paulinische Evangelium I: Vorgeschichte (FRLANT 95; Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1968); G. Friedrich, "euangelion," TDNT 2:707-737
- minorityThe imperial cult is the controlling context: in cities saturated with emperor worship, calling one man Son of God, Savior, and Lord, and his arrival the good news for the world, could only be heard as a deliberate counter-proclamation against Caesar.; N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Fortress, 2013), chs. 5, 12; D. Georgi, Theocracy in Paul's Praxis and Theology (Fortress, 1991)
- contestedA mediating view: the shared semantic core across pagan, Jewish, and Christian usage is simply public news of an event; Isaiah supplies the content while the broader Hellenistic announcement field, of which imperial proclamations are the most visible example, supplies the public register that let pagan converts understand the term.; J. Dickson, "Gospel as News," NTS 51 (2005): 212-230; M. Bird, The Gospel of the Lord (Eerdmans, 2014); C. Heilig, Hidden Criticism? (Mohr Siebeck, 2015)