What’s the Difference Between the Gospel of the Kingdom and the Gospel of Christ?
Selected from our Questions and Answers program
A: The gospel of the kingdom is the preaching of John the Baptist: “The kingdom of heaven is at hand” (
Matthew 3:2). We do not preach that gospel today. The Lord Jesus preached it when He first began (see
Matthew 4:17), and He sent His disciples out, saying, “Go…to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand” (
Matthew 10:6,7). These men went out and preached that, but the day came when that changed. After His death and resurrection He said, “Don’t just go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, but go now to the
world” (see
Mark 16:15). And to the world was to be preached the gospel of Christ. Paul mentions in
Romans 15:19, “I have fully preached the gospel of Christ.” Read his epistles and you’ll find that the gospel he preached was that of the death and resurrection of Christ. He wrote to the Corinthians and said, “I delivered unto you first of all the gospel. And the gospel I preach is the one that you believed in, the one that saved you.” Well, what is it, Paul? It’s “that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures” (
1 Corinthians 15:3). That’s the gospel, it’s nothing but the gospel, and nothing else is the gospel. Even if an angel from heaven appears to you and preaches any other gospel, Paul says let him be accursed! (See
Galatians 1:8.) Because there’s only one gospel that we are to preach today. We do not preach the gospel of the kingdom. I wish we could get that through today to a great many who are talking about the gospel of the kingdom. Now the day’s coming after the church is taken out of this world when that gospel of the kingdom — “the kingdom of heaven is at hand” — is going to go forth again, because He’s going to be coming shortly after the announcement has been made. Somebody may argue, “Well, maybe there are some people today who are preaching the gospel of the kingdom because they’ve got some inside information that maybe He’s going to be coming in the next two or three years.” Well, some of them have been preaching it since 1915, and, friends, He hasn’t arrived yet. So I think maybe they ought to take that record off and put the record on of the gospel of the grace of God. The gospel of Christ. The gospel that saves men and women. That’s the gospel that it’s important for us to preach today.
