Bible: New Testament: English Standard Version

The New Testament is centered around a message of “good news,” which is the meaning of the word “gospel.” In Jesus’s teaching, this good news is the announcement of the kingdom of God (Mark 1:14-15), whereas the epistles tend to focus the gospel message on the identity and actions of Jesus himself. This apparent disjunction marks less of a change than it might appear at first glance; both messages are rooted in the idea that God’s saving action has broken into the history of humanity in a new and transformative way. Jesus’s proclamation of the kingdom of God is connected to Jewish expectations of the messianic age and the last days—namely, that God would send his chosen emissary, his Messiah, to restore his people and save them from their enemies, leading to a golden age of the reign of God. The early Christian gospel retained this idea, but rather than phrasing it in terms of the kingdom of God, they saw those expectations as having been inaugurated in Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, so they referred to the gospel in regard to what Jesus had done: “Remember