Short Take: How was the gospel made clear before Jesus actually died?

Okay, Brandon, answer that question for the progressive who says Jesus couldn't be preaching the gospel because if the gospel is about him dying, he was preaching it before he actually died.

How would you answer that issue and why is this typical of how progressive Christians twist things? The gospel is primarily a person, like as Alistair Begg said, Jesus is himself the gospel. So it's his person and work. So included in that is who he is and what he has done to reconcile sinners to God. When Jesus is living out the gospel and he's doing his earthly ministry in the present, he'll say, follow me. When Paul is talking about Jesus and what he has done in the past, he's basically saying follow Christ. We preach Christ crucified, repent and believe the gospel.

So it's the same thing. In one sense, you have the gospel in flesh telling people to follow him. He hasn't worked out everything he was going to do yet as far as dying, but he still at the same time will say things like, I'm the good shepherd who lays down his life for sheep.

So he is talking about what he's going to do. You'll hear a lot of progressives talk about the gospel of the kingdom. It might be hard for them to express what that is, but a lot of times it ends up being something about social justice, like Jesus came to help the poor and the outcast. But when we talk about the kingdom of God, we first have to remember that Jesus himself was that king and he claimed to be the long awaited Messiah. And when he preached the kingdom, it was the forgiveness of sins. He had the authority to forgive and the Pharisees heard him do that and said that was blasphemy because he was basically claiming to be God. So Jesus's gospel of the kingdom, you have Jesus forgiving sins based on the sacrifice that he was heading toward. And in the gospel that Paul preaches, it's the same thing.

Believe in this king, Jesus our Messiah, for the forgiveness of sins. There's really no difference. It's just kind of a matter of perspective.