Scot McKnight on the Gospel

Scot McKnight, The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, forthcoming 2011), 176pp., ISBN 9780310492986.

The ever-prolific Scot McKnight is at it again, this time with a forthcoming book on the gospel due out later this year (September being the promised month).

Of course, he has already written on the gospel elsewhere in several places, but it will be great to have some of his thoughts on the topic gathered together in one volume.

Here’s the Synopsis:

‘The gospel is the declaration that Jesus is Messiah and Lord and that gospel declares that the Story of Jesus completes the Story of Israel in a way that saves. This gospel counters the shallow and superficial gospeling today that reduces the gospel to four simple points and eliminates the confession that Jesus is Messiah and Lord.

And here’s the Description:

‘Contemporary evangelicals have built a “salvation culture” but not a “gospel culture.” Evangelicals have reduced the gospel to the message of personal salvation. This book makes a plea for us to recover the old gospel as that which is still new and still fresh. The book stands on four arguments: that the gospel is defined by the apostles in 1 Corinthians 15 as the completion of the Story of Israel in the saving Story of Jesus; that the gospel is found in the Four Gospels; that the gospel was preached by Jesus; and that the sermons in the Book of Acts are the best example of gospeling in the New Testament. In the Beginning was the Gospel ends with practical suggestions about evangelism and about building a gospel culture.

(I’m wondering whether Zondervan left in an old working title for the book in that final sentence...)

I’m looking forward to this one; meanwhile, there’s a pdf excerpt available here.