Thursday, 9/18/14
St. Paul, in writing to the Christians at Corinth, reminded
them of the Gospel he preached to them.
Our English word gospel is a contraction of two early English
words gode and spell, with gode being an
earlier spelling of good, and spell
having been our twelfth century word for news. That is how we translate Paul’s
word euaggelon, which meant “happy
news.”
When we hear the word gospel we think of the four gospels: of
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; but it is better for us to return the word to its
original meaning. For the people of Corinth before Paul came there was no
escaping death. They saw death as the complete cessation of life and of everything
dear to them.
He could have given them nothing more joyous than the
assurance that the man Jesus arose from the dead after three days, after
promising us that if we believed in
him and loved one another, he could bring us back from death to unending
happiness.
That, and that alone, is the gospel, the good news. The
accounts from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are just filler, explaining and
backing up the good news: namely, that Jesus passed through death to life, and
if we hang on to him he will pull us through too.
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