There are two words that sit right at the center of everything Christians talk about. Two words you’ve heard a thousand times.
Gospel. And faith.
Every pastor assumes that everybody knows what these words mean.
But what I want to suggest to you today is that most of us don’t really know what either of them means.
And I don’t mean we’re fuzzy on the details. I mean we’ve gotten the definitions of these words completely wrong.
I want to be clear. This is not some fringe idea. The scholars behind this reassessment, people like Drs. Matthew Bates, Scot McKnight, Nijay K. Gupta, N.T. Wright, are not radicals. They are working from the original Greek texts, from the historical context of the first century, and from church history. And they keep arriving at the same conclusions.
This presentation will be in two parts. Part One: what the gospel actually is.
And Part Two: what faith, that is the Greek word pistis, actually means in context.
PART ONE: THE GOSPEL
First, let’s talk about what the Gospel Is Not
If you ask most Christians today to define the gospel, you’re likely going to get one of two answers.
The first answer sounds something like this: we are all sinners. We’ve broken God’s law. And because God is holy and just, that sin has to be dealt with. The good news, the gospel, is that Jesus dealt with it for us. He died in our place.
And now, if you believe that, if you put your faith in what he did, you are forgiven, you are right with God, and you have eternal life.
Those are real things that Scripture more or less teaches.
But the argument we’re going to make is that that’s not the gospel. Or at least, it’s not a complete definition of the gospel. And treating it as the whole thing produces real problems.
The second common answer to what the gospel is is similar: that the gospel is specifically what happened at the cross, that Jesus died for our sins.
Different traditions offer various theories about how his death paid for our sins, but they would say that understanding and believing that our sins were dealt with at the cross is the gospel.
The fact that Jesus died for our sins is absolutely part of the gospel.
We’re going to see that Paul explicitly includes it in his gospel presentations. But saying the gospel is essentially the story of how the cross dealt with our sin problem, taking that one piece and calling it the whole thing, that’s where we start to go wrong.
Both reductions, justification by faith as the gospel, and atonement theory as the gospel, share the same underlying flaw: they make the rest of the ministry of Jesus theologically unnecessary.
If justification by faith is the gospel, the four books we literally call the Gospels don’t contain the gospel.
Everything Jesus said and did becomes background material. You could construct the entire gospel without ever opening Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.
So if those things aren’t the gospel, what is?
Start with the word itself. Euangelion, the Greek word we translate as gospel, means good news. Specifically though, it’s the kind of news that gets publicly proclaimed.
And in the ancient Greco-Roman world, it had an even more specific meaning. It was the kind of announcement you made when a king won a battle.
When a royal heir took the throne. When the political order of the realm fundamentally changed.
It was a public proclamation so that the people of that realm would know that everything is different now, that they had a new king.
However, in the Christian context I like to think of the gospel this way: you’re trying to convince someone that Jesus is their rightful king, and to do that, you often need to explain the story of Jesus’s royal career, his pre-existence with God in heaven, how he became a man, his fulfillment of these ancient prophecies about the coming king, his death for sins, his resurrection, his enthronement, and his coming return. The four books called the Gospels tell this story because the whole story matters when trying to convince someone that they have a king and that king is worthy of their devotion.
For a first-century Jew, part of that case was genealogical. They already knew a king was coming. So you had to show them that Jesus came from the line of David, that he fulfilled what the prophets said, that he was the king that they had been waiting for.
If you had to pick a single part of the gospel that best captured this idea, it might be the resurrection and enthronement, because that is when Jesus took his seat at God’s right hand on the throne prepared for him.
This is why Hebrews can say Jesus endured the cross “for the joy set before him.” There was something waiting on the other side of his mission on earth. The throne was the prize. The suffering was the path to it.
The resurrection and enthronement in heaven was the moment of transfer.
Jesus moved from Son of God to Son-of-God-in-Power. And this idea is given prominent place in Romans 1:2-4, which is one of the most clear definitions of the gospel according to Paul:
“This gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, concerning his Son who was a descendant of David with reference to the flesh, who was appointed the Son-of-God-in-power according to the Holy Spirit by the resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 1:2-4)
Then there’s the passage in 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul spends at least 25 verses explaining the Gospel. He says that Jesus died for our sins according to the Scriptures (v. 3), that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day. Paul then goes on to describe at length how Jesus appeared to specific witnesses.
After that, he explains why the resurrection matters for his readers, showing how it is connected to their own eternal life. Finally, in verses 24-25, he connects the resurrection to Jesus’s reign in heaven, stating that Jesus must reign until all His enemies are put under His feet.
And then there’s Paul’s gospel presentation in Philippians 2:5-11 which says:
Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:5-11)
Paul’s highlights here include the pre-existence of Christ in divine form, his voluntary self-emptying and incarnation as a human being, his life of servanthood, his obedient death on the cross, his subsequent exaltation by God, and his universal lordship over all creation, in heaven, on earth, and under the earth.
Notice where the story ends in all three of those gospel messages. With Jesus as a ruling, authoritative king in heaven. That’s the climax. Not the cross. The throne.
Different people will need to enter this story from a different angle. The guilt-ridden need to hear about the death that cleanses. The enslaved need to hear about the king who broke the powers. The skeptic needs the historical witnesses. The person drowning in meaninglessness needs to know history has a king and a destination.
The entry point varies. But the destination is always the same: Jesus is the rightful king of the universe, not one option among many, but the actual Lord to whom every life is accountable.
PART TWO: WHAT IS FAITH?
But now that we know what the gospel actually is, we need to know how do we respond to it? And that brings us to Part Two of this presentation: what is the meaning of faith?
We know that the correct response to hearing the gospel is faith. We have heard it all of our lives.
The problem is, we have forgotten what that word means too, and it is causing significant problems.
The Greek word pistis, which is often translated as “faith,” has been so stripped of its original meaning that what most Christians mean when they say “have faith” has very little to do with what Paul meant when he wrote the word pistis.
Here’s how Matthew Bates, author of Salvation by Allegiance Alone and Gospel Allegiance, puts it: pistis, generally rendered as faith or belief, as it pertains to Christian salvation, quite simply has little correlation with faith and belief as these words are generally understood and used in contemporary Christian culture, and much to do with what we think of as “allegiance.”
Now, an important clarification before we go any further. Nobody is arguing that pistis means allegiance in every single place it appears in the New Testament. The word has a genuine range of meaning, and most of those meanings are perfectly captured by our English words.
When a leper comes to Jesus and says I believe you can heal me, that’s trust, that’s confidence, and “faith” is exactly the right translation. When Jesus says “your faith has made you well,” nobody needs to redefine anything.
The argument is narrower than that. It’s specifically about the salvation passages, the texts where Paul and the other New Testament writers describe what it means to respond to the gospel, what puts you in right standing before God. In those passages, pistis means something far richer than what most modern Christians picture when they hear the word “believe.”
As we saw, Matthew Bates, and many scholars agree with him, proposes that the best English translation of pistis in this context is allegiance.
Here’s why that word fits. In political and royal contexts, and this is well established in the Greek literature of the New Testament era, pistis consistently carries the meaning of loyalty, fidelity, allegiance to a king or sovereign. The same word your New Testament translates as “faith” was the word Greek speakers naturally reached for when describing a subject’s sworn loyalty to his king.
And here’s the thing about Paul: he is always talking about a king.
Every single time Paul writes “Jesus Christ,” Christ is not a last name. It is a title. It means the Messiah, the Anointed One, the King.
Paul is constantly speaking about the enthroned king when he uses pistis language. The gospel he proclaims climaxes with a coronation. Given that context, what is the most natural meaning of the required response? Not a private internal feeling of trust. Allegiance.
Sworn loyalty to the one who has been installed on the throne.
In Romans 1:5, Paul describes his entire mission as bringing about “the obedience of pistis” among the nations. Not obedience that follows pistis. Not obedience alongside pistis. The obedience of pistis.
That construction only makes sense if pistis already contains loyal commitment within it. You would never say “the obedience of belief.”
But “the obedience of allegiance” is completely natural, because allegiance by definition is the kind of thing that produces obedience.
So the way to read some of the famous justification passages would be something like this:
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through the allegiance of Jesus the Christ for all who give allegiance.
Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through the allegiance of Jesus the Christ, so we also have given allegiance to Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by the allegiance of the Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified. (Gal. 2:16)
Now, brothers and sisters, I bring to your attention the gospel that I gospeled to you, which you received, on which you stand, and through which also you are being saved, that is, if you hold fast to the word that I gospeled to you, unless you have given allegiance in vain. (1 Cor. 15:1-2)
So what does this resolve?
Quite a lot, as it turns out.
One of the things that has fractured Christianity into so many competing traditions is that the New Testament seems to require different things for salvation depending on which passage you’re reading. And different traditions have built entire systems on one or two of those passages while quietly setting the others aside.
John 3:16 emphasizes belief, while Acts 2:38 calls for repentance and baptism. In Luke 13:3, Jesus warns that unless you repent, you will all likewise perish, and in Romans 10:9, Paul teaches that one must confess with the mouth and believe in the heart. Furthermore, Matthew 24:13 speaks of enduring to the end in order to be saved, whereas James 2:24 states that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.
Pistis as allegiance holds all of it together. Because what does genuine allegiance to a king actually include?
It obviously includes believing he is who he claims to be. But it also includes turning from your former life, that’s repentance. It includes public declaration of whose side you’re on, that’s confession. It includes following his specific instructions, one of which is baptism. It includes doing what he says, not just nodding along, that’s the works passages. And it includes staying loyal over time, that’s endurance.
None of these are separate requirements bolted onto faith. They are all aspects of allegiance to a king.
And this also makes sense of something that has puzzled interpreters for centuries. If works are the enemy of faith, why does James say flatly in James 2:24, “You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone”?
Now, Paul does contrast faith and works in many places, and he is right to do so. You cannot earn your way into the kingdom. You cannot bring circumcision, or moral achievement to that first moment and use it to purchase access to God.
When Paul says we are saved by pistis and not by works, he means the door is open to anyone who will simply bend the knee to the new king. You don’t have to qualify first. You don’t have to clean yourself up first. Allegiance is the only entry requirement.
But allegiance is not nothing. It is not a private feeling you have once and then move on. A subject who swears loyalty to his king and then ignores everything the king says hasn’t given allegiance. This is exactly what James is saying when he says:
But someone may well say, “You have faith and I have works; show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works.” You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder. But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless? (James 2:18-20)
James isn’t contradicting Paul. He is describing what real allegiance looks like from the outside: it produces works, it endures, it obeys. Pistis without works isn’t a weak allegiance. It isn’t allegiance at all.
So the tension that has puzzled interpreters for centuries dissolves. Works cannot get you in, only allegiance can do that. But once you are in, allegiance requires works. The same word covers both realities, because that is what loyalty to a king has always meant.
So what does this actually look like in practice?
If you genuinely have pistis, if you have truly bent the knee to Jesus as your king, then the natural, obvious next move is to go find out what he wants.
And here’s where the four Gospels come back in, because this is exactly what they’re for. The Sermon on the Mount isn’t a list of impossible demands designed to show you how badly you need grace.
It’s the law of the king. It’s what life in his kingdom looks like. This is what all the earliest Christians believed.
When Jesus says love your enemies, turn the other cheek, don’t lust, forgive, he means it. He’s not winking at you. He’s telling you what he wants from his subjects. And if he’s your king, you go and do it. Not by white-knuckling it in your own strength, but through the Holy Spirit he gives you when you come to him.
As Jesus himself said, why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do the things that I say? The word Lord means master. If he’s your master, you do what he says.
Now none of this means sinless perfection. Sanctification is a process. The picture is not that you bend the knee and immediately get everything right. The picture is that the king points to the next thing, and you work on it, and there is grace on the road while you do.
Salvation is not a single moment but a journey. God is continuously at work in the believer, progressively transforming them from the inside out. The new birth is the beginning, not the destination. What follows is a life of growth, of the Holy Spirit working in you, of being conformed increasingly to the image of the king you’ve submitted to. That is the normal Christian life as the New Testament describes it.
And here’s the good news that gets missed when people hear this framework for the first time: you have an advocate. First John 2 says:
“if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”
An advocate. Someone pleading your case before the Father. Not because you’ve earned it, but because you belong to him.
But repentance comes before the refreshing, not after. Acts 3:19, repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.
You must repent. People wait to feel ready. They want the desire to go away before they commit to stopping. But that’s backwards. You draw the line first. You give your allegiance, which includes the relinquishing of the sin that has you in bondage. And then the power to walk in the new direction is given. You can’t ask the king to take away the desire for something you haven’t surrendered to him yet.
So here is the gospel, and here is the proper response to it.
Jesus is the King of the Universe. He was promised, he came, he lived, he died for your sins, he was raised, and he was installed on the throne. He is reigning right now. And every knee will soon bow to him. The only question is whether yours bows now, willingly, or later, at the judgment.
The proper response to that message is allegiance to this king.
What that looks like, practically and concretely, is that you go read the Gospels. You find out what he says. You do it. Not by your own power, but through the Holy Spirit he gives you the moment he cleanses you with his blood and forgives every previous sin, every failure, everything, completely forgotten.
And if you once knew this and walked away from it, if you’re in the pigsty right now, pointing to some moment in the past as your assurance while your life tells a different story, he’s got his hand out to you too. As long as you have breath in your lungs, that hand is there, but you don’t get unlimited chances. Come back now. Not to a prayer, not to a decision. Come back to the king.
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