General Editor, Kelinda Crawford:
Your new book, The Gospel
According to Paul, is third in a series,
which includes The Gospel According
to Jesus and The Gospel According
to the Apostles. Paul is perhaps the
most written-about apostle. Does
your book focus on the man or on
the way in which he defines the
Good News of Jesus through his
letters? When we put all of his gospel
summaries together, we get a
wonderfully rich, amazingly coherent
theology of salvation. The Gospel
According to Paul examines several
of the key passages where Paul
gave thumbnail sketches of the
gospel, unveiling a comprehensive,
analytical picture of what Paul had
in mind when he spoke of preaching
“the word of the cross.”
MacArthur: The book does include
some background on the life of the
apostle—his conversion, his approach
to ministry, and some details about
his missionary work. He’s always been
my favorite of all the leading figures
in the early church.
But the book’s primary focus is the
content of his message. My aim was
to answer a simple but vital question:
What, precisely, did Paul mean
when he said, “We preach Christ
crucified”? Paul himself answers that
question in a number of passages
where he condenses the gospel
message into just a verse or two.
He loved to make these summary
statements, conveying the gospel
in capsule form. He was always very
focused, consistent, and profound—
never flippant or superficial when it
came to explaining the gospel.
And he wasn’t repetitious. He
often varied the words he used or
the points he emphasized. That’s
because he didn’t think of the gospel
as a formula, or a memorized script,
or a simple list of “four things God
wants you to know.” Crawford: What do you find unique
about Paul’s understanding and
teaching concerning the Gospel?
MacArthur: Paul had an amazing
ability to detect error and see the
dangers posed to the gospel by
legalism, half-hearted faith, and
other bad teachings of various
kinds. He was constantly on guard
against threats to the health and
sanctification of the early church.
As a result, all his teaching about
the gospel has polemical overtones.
(He is often answering challenging
questions or refuting some error or
misunderstanding.) That serves to
make his teaching about the gospel
very precise. We can learn a lot from
simply observing how he proclaimed
and defended the gospel.
He liked to refer to the Good
News as “my gospel.” He was very
protective of the message and its
underlying doctrines. He testified
that he had learned the gospel by
direct revelation from Christ. That
was the whole basis of his claim
to apostleship, and all the other
We’ve fallen into a bad habit of using misleading euphemisms and
weak clichés as a substitute for proclaiming the actual gospel.
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