This powerful new study of the gospel by Matthew Bates takes us where we have not gone often enough, to the why of the gospel. Yet for the sake of the church’s health and mission today, this is exactly where we need to go. We need to journey into the gospel’s purposes. Bates’s book points out a fresh path, then expertly guides us down it.

Why is urgent because the gospel that many accepted, many believe, many preach and teach, and that many have inscribed into official church statements is deconstructing the church. I have elsewhere described this gospel as “soterian” because it is narrowly concerned with the salvation associated with personal forgiveness. Folks may no longer be coming to church in their Sunday finest, but many are sitting in pews every Sunday, all too comfortable, because they are confident that the gospel means they are “saved” or “justified” or “going to heaven when they die.”

This all too comfortable feeling stems from a deficient understanding of the gospel in the Bible. Yet millions have accepted such ideas as the full gospel truth and enshrined them in gospel tracts, gospel sermons, and evangelistic methods. They have been further institutionalized by worship services that speak about the saving benefits of Jesus’s death but little else. But a gospel that foregrounds personal forgiveness is not the gospel of Jesus, not the gospel of Peter, not the gospel of Paul, and it is not the gospel of anyone else in the New Testament.

This is why Matthew Bates’s study of the gospel’s why is pressing for the church and practical. Bates has a wonderful section in this book on various “malformed gospels.” Beyond that, his chapters will generate a thousand conversations, as he unlocks what Scripture says about the gospel’s why in an innovative yet faithful fashion. He discusses the cycle of glory, holistic restoration, personal transformation, why “nones” are disinterested in Christianity and how to engage them, and many other topics.

—Scot McKnight, Northern Seminary