My short definition of the gospel

I wrote a discussion starter for a class I'm teaching and it included my definitions of what the gospel is (short, medium, and long). Today I'll give you my short one and part of my initial  discussion:.

Short definition:

"The story of Jesus; Christ and Lord who saves and will judge."

Reading through Scripture's use of the word, it will become clearer why I think this is such an important distinction (or expansion) to make. The focus of Scripture is on Jesus' fulfillment of the promises that Israel's king would bring in God's rule over everything by rescuing his people and bringing judgment on the oppressors. This is a major OT theme as well as NT, and it is the gospel: Jesus, the King is Lord who saves and will judge.

Here's some quick stats to put into perspective why I call Jesus Christ and Lord, but avoid Saviour and Judge. He is referred to as 'Judge' only 3 or 4 times (God is called 'Judge' 1 or 2 times), and 'Saviour' 15 or 16 times (God is 'Saviour' 7 or 8 times). However, the actions of judging or saving are used too many times for me to have sorted through and counted so far. The point is that the verbs are applied to Jesus far more than the nouns in these cases.

In comparison, the Greek title of Christ/Messiah/King is used 569 times and very few do not refer to Jesus. Also, "Lord" or "Master" is used of Jesus or God over 550 times and most are referring to Jesus. In both cases, with Christ and Lord, the title is used with Jesus's name so much that the NT writers even used it in place of his name, which we do all the time. When we're comparing over 500 occurrences to under 20 the standard seems obvious.

More importantly, when the NT writers, and even the sermons in Acts, explain the gospel it includes as a primary assertion that Jesus is the Christ and is also the Lord. There are a few flickers of calling him judge, most importantly in Acts 17, and there are a handful where he is called Saviour, but over half are in Titus and 2 Peter which are both 'late' writings and therefore distanced from the earliest articulations of the gospel. In the first 5 books of the NT, "Saviour" is only used once in Lk and Jn and twice in Acts. The point is not that we shouldn't call Jesus Judge of all or Saviour of the world, only that it is not the primary way the bible articulates the gospel. However the actions of saving and judging occur all over the place so we ought to include these as integral.