What does First B Jackson teach about what is the gospel?
Drawn from the messages where it was actually addressed: the words said from the front, the passages taught, and where to hear the whole thing.
At First B Jackson, the teaching on the gospel starts with a pointed question: can you say what it actually is in plain, ordinary language? Pastor Ray McDaniel returned to this question across multiple years, and the consistent answer is that if you cannot put the gospel into simple words, something is either unclear in your understanding or untested in your belief. The driving text is Romans 1:16-17, where Paul says he is not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. That word 'power' matters here. The gospel is not just the entry point into the Christian life. Drawing on 1 Corinthians 1:18 and its language of 'those who are being saved,' Pastor Ray taught that salvation is a progressive reality, not a one-time transaction that gets left behind once a person believes.
The content of that gospel was worked out through congregation-wide exercises in which members were asked to put it into ten words or less. The answers ranged from a single word, 'Jesus,' to short phrases like 'But God,' to careful sentences covering Christ's death, burial, resurrection, and witnesses, as Paul does in 1 Corinthians 15:3-5. Isaiah 30:15 gave an Old Testament angle: 'In repentance and rest is your salvation. In quietness and trust is your strength.' But Pastor Ray was clear that the New Testament gospel requires the name of Jesus, not just the shape of trust. The variety of responses also showed something important: the congregation, across ages and levels of formal Bible knowledge, was pointing at the same center again and again.
Pastor Carl, working through the same Romans passage on an earlier occasion, framed the assignment the same way. His own professor, he said, never used the bare word 'gospel' without explaining it, and Pastor Carl carried that habit. Both he and Ray drew on C. S. Lewis, who wrote that any failure to put faith into ordinary language likely exposes the fact that you do not exactly know what you mean. That is the reason for the ten-word limit, not to reduce the gospel to a slogan, but to find out what a person actually believes well enough to say it simply to someone else.
Taught from Romans 1:16-17 · 1 Corinthians 15:3-5 · 1 Corinthians 1:18 · Isaiah 30:15 · 1 John 5:12
The passage taught · 1 Corinthians 15:3-5
3 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,
5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- February 5, 2023 The Gospel in Ten Words or Less Pastor Ray asks his congregation to answer one question: what is the gospel in 10 words or less? Their answers reveal the heart of Christian faith.
- February 5, 2023 The Gospel in Ten Words or Less Pastor Ray asks his congregation to sum up the gospel in 10 words or less, then shares responses from seven years ago while walking through what the good news of Jesus really means.
- February 7, 2016 Not Ashamed of the Gospel Pastor Ray walks Romans 1:16-17 through a congregation-wide exercise: summing up the gospel in ten words or less, then living it out.
- February 7, 2016 Y'all Know the Gospel Pastor Ray crowdsourced Romans 1:16-17 from his congregation, asking them to define the gospel in 10 words or less. Their answers reveal what the good news really means.
- January 31, 2016 Not Ashamed of the Gospel Pastor Carl walks through Romans 1:8-17, asking every believer to put the gospel into one clear sentence, and shows why that matters for sharing faith with others.
- January 31, 2016 Not Ashamed of the Gospel Romans 1:8-17 explores what the gospel really is, why Paul was not ashamed of it, and how every believer should be able to say it plainly in a sentence.