Review: "The Gospel According to Jesus"

Chris Seay’s book, The Gospel According to Jesus: A Faith That Restores All Things, presents a real and terrible truth: Christians don’t know how to state the Gospel. Check out the product information at http://www.thomasnelson.com/consumer/product_detail.asp?sku=0849948169&title=The_Gospel_According_to_Jesus

Seay presents the problem and then argues that the best way to understand the Gospel is to get an accurate understanding of the word, “righteousness.” Seay defines it as “restorative justice.”

Seay alternates chapters with interviews with Gabe Lyons, Shane Claiborne, Rich McKinley, Alan Hirsch, Mark Batterson, and Dan Kimball on what he has written in the chapter. In the middle of the book, there are a series of color paintings by Scott Erickson, for visio divina.

The good of this book is that Seay recognizes the problem in modern Christendom – most people don’t know how to state the Gospel. He explains that the Social Gospel of doing good for neighbor is not enough and mere intellectual knowledge is not enough. This is wonderful, and it reminds me of the Reformational word that Salvation is by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone. In other words, salvation through faith alone leads to good works in thanksgiving to Jesus for Salvation.

The disappointments of this book are these:

First, he uses his The Voice so-called translation, which I have reviewed before and find inaccurate and unusable.

Second, in attempting to address the issue from many direction – chapter, interview, and paintings – he has put together what I found to be an exceedingly confusing book to read.

Third, not helping, is his use of modern “in-the-know” terminology.

And fourth, so far as I can tell, the Gospel is never defined.

For these reasons, I cannot recommend this book.

What is the Gospel? “Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you – unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day, in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep” (I Corinthians 15:1-6, ESV).

[This review appears on Amazon.com and my blog. I received this book for free from Thomas Nelson Publishing Group for this review.]