Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Good News: To Be Announced, Heralded, Proclaimed

D. A. Carson on the "gospel" and "preaching" vocabulary in the Scriptures:
Because the gospel is news, good news (even if some will hear it as bad news), it is to be announced: that's what one does with news. The essentially heraldic element in preaching is bound up with the fact that the core message is not a code of ethics to be debated, still less a list of aphorisms to be admired and pondered, and certainly not a systematic theology to be outlined and schematized. Though it properly grounds ethics, aphorisms, and systematics, it is none of these three: it is news, good news, and therefore must be publicly announced. . . . The gospel is primarily displayed in heraldic proclamation: the gospel is announced, proclaimed, preached, precisely because it is God's spectacular news.
"What is the Gospel?—Revisited, " in For the Fame of God's Name: Essays in Honor of John Piper (ed. Sam Storms and Justin Taylor; Wheaton: Crossway, 2010), 158.

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