I’ve been spending the last three days discussing how the gospel about Jesus Christ and the gospel of Jesus Christ are actually one gospel. As a movement committed to fulfilling the Great Commission, Campus Crusade for Christ must by definition hold both together. In healthy tension, no doubt–given our identity as a movement committed to the bold proclamation of the gospel to the ends of the earth. Still, many of us are increasingly realizing that our joyful announcing of the reign of God through His in-breaking kingdom naturally serves a a context for even more effective proclamation. Loving actions toward a suffering world always proclaim a viable Savior; the mercy of God lived out in His followers is always, as John Piper says, “a presenting of Christ.” Of course, whatever the response, Christ-followers can’t really say Jesus is King without also living out His reign in the streets.
Rick McKinley of the Imago Dei Community in Portland noted the following:
If we only value a salvation gospel, we tend to miss the rest of Christ’s message. Taken out of context of an inaugurated kingdom, the call to faith in Christ gets reduced to something less than the New Testament teaches. The reverse is also true. If we value a kingdom gospel at the expense of the liberating message of the Cross and the empty tomb and a call to repentance, we miss a central tenet of kingdom life. Without faith in Jesus, there is no transferring of our lives into the new world of the kingdom.