What Good News Really Means
“But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; for see-I am bringing you good news of great joy for all people.”
If you’ve been a Christian for any length of time, you’ve heard the phrase “the good news of the gospel.” Yet saying “the good news of the gospel” is redundant because in the Biblical Greek the word “gospel” means “good news.” In the enlightening book, After Jesus Before Christianity, Erin Vearncombe and others point out that “good news” appears “101 times in the New Testament across eighteen books.” Vearncombe et al. bring to light how early Christians used terms like “good news” to poke the political beast that was the Roman Empire. Again, those who claim there shouldn’t be politics in church misread their Bible and misunderstand the Christian faith.
Vearncombe et al. share two ways in which ancient first-century Roman society understood “good news.” First, “good news” was not defined by political power or earthly wealth. The original use of the phrase “good news” was an expression used to describe the “birth of an emperor or the coming of the [royal] Anointed. By reframing a royal description of the sacred emperor, it is a political slap in the face. The earliest church’s language intentionally picks a fight with the empire.
Second, by describing “good news” as the equality of all people and all being made in God’s image, it challenges the Roman paradigm. The Roman description of “good news” is the emperor’s power through violent overthrow. The Romans had almost no middle class, and the emperor viewed the lower class as tools for the wealthy. The “good news” for the faithful was that all were worthy of emotional care and physical support, as evidenced by sharing food and shelter. The earliest faith communities sometimes lived in communes, but all had some form of communal support. Instead of being manipulated tools of the emperor, the early church’s good news values every person as blessed without being viewed as less than anyone else.
When Christianity is at its most faithful, all are accepted and power is understood to come from God’s loving compassion, rather than political manipulation and violence. While Christianity has rarely lived up to its divine call to offer God’s “good news,” at least Christianity tries to follow its better angels. When you hear our politicians, listen for whether they speak with a humble heart or with an arrogant, imperial tone? Do our religious and political leaders’ actions care for all people, or mainly for their wealthy constituents, whom they feel are the only ones worthy of their support? The Roman Empire and 21st-century America have more in common than we’d like to admit. Our task is to share God’s “good news” of loving care based on mutual respect, and to speak out against Roman forms of arrogant imperialism.
