More reasons to understand that the Christian is actually called to engage the political sphere and implement Jesus' authority in that very sphere:
The term “gospel†or “evangelion†is widely accepted to denote the good news that people can be saved by faith in Jesus Christ. However, this is not really how Paul used the term. In fact, Paul, drawing on the meaning of the term in his time and culture, uses the term to essentially denote the proclamation that Jesus is the Davidic Messiah, and His resurrection from the dead constitutes Him as the Lord of all the Universe. This is not to deny that we can indeed be saved by faith. But this not what the term “gospel†actually meant to Paul.
Paul had two sources that informed his use of the term “gospelâ€Â. One of these was the Jewish usage, the other the secular usage. In this post, I concentrate on the Jewish use.
The Jewish usage of the relevant root of “evangelion†has at the least the following two informing sources:
You who bring good tidings to Zion,
go up on a high mountain.
You who bring good tidings to Jerusalem,
lift up your voice with a shout,
lift it up, do not be afraid;
say to the towns of Judah,
"Here is your God!" Isaiah 40:9
How beautiful on the mountains
are the feet of those who bring good news,
who proclaim peace,
who bring good tidings,
who proclaim salvation,
who say to Zion,
"Your God reigns!" Isaiah 52:7
Without the appropriate knowledge of the Old Testament context and Messianic expectations in which Paul was steeped, it is easy to buy into the simplistic argument that the term “gospel†simply denotes the good news about how individuals get saved. But for Paul, it was a much more particular matter than that.
Paul was deeply immersed in the Jewish expectation that YHWH would return to Zion to be enthroned and that Israel would experience a return from her exile. While, at the time of Paul, the Jews were indeed physically back in Israel, they were, for all practical purposes still in exile (they were under the domination of the pagan Romans).
The writings from Qumran endorse this view, making frequent references to the notion of the Isaianic herald as embodied in the two texts above. So Paul lived and breathed in a culture that was aching for the “good news†expressed in these prophecies from Isaiah.
Within this framework of expectation, Paul’s startling realization was that the resurrection of Jesus constituted both the return of YHWH to Zion and the return of Israel from exile. Paul understood Jesus to have borne Israel’s destiny and the resurrection of Jesus from the “exile of death†is discerned by Paul as entailing the true meaning of the covenant promise of return from exile.
So when Paul uses the term “gospel†he is giving flesh and bones to the “good tidings†in the Isaianic texts about a God who would return to Zion and who would deliver Israel from exile. He is emphasizing the Messiahship of Jesus and His enthronement as King, seeing His resurrection from the dead as endorsing this. Thus when Paul proclaims his “gospel†in Romans 1:2-4, the issue of “how you get saved†is characterized as a result of the gospel, not its substantive content, which is instead centred on Jesus’ Messiahship (hence the reference to being of the line of David) and his lordship:
2the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures 3regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, 4and who through the Spirit[a] of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord.
Jesus is a reigning and the church has the responsibility to implement his kingship.
, Jesus says if we love this world we have no part in His kingdom. Jesus' followers' are citizens of His kingdom, not in this world.
