John Meunier ponders the gospel debate

I found a post on the gospel by John Meunier, a part-time pastor.

In it, he cites an interview with Tim Keller on Trevin Wax's blog about the gospel needing to keep the salvation of the individual central. As you can imagine, I couldn't disagree more. This was the comment I left on the blog:

I think the real problem is that real conversation isn’t taking place. McKnight et al are still being misunderstood and lumped into a 'kingdom' or social gospel rather than their actual view of Jesus as the fulfillment of Israel's story and the promises of God to make a people for himself (which contains individuals necessarily) through which to redeem the whole creation. The individualism of Keller and others at TGC is not the gospel according to scripture. I used to define it that way, but after reading McKnight's book on the subject and rereading the entire New Testament and studying every instance of the noun and verb 'gospel(led)' it is clear who is using the term correctly. It is not as though individuals aren't saved, that justification isn't by by faith, or that the gospel has nothing to do with the forgiveness of sins, but that is a misdirected and narrow view that is simply not the focus of the gospel as defined by the New Testament.

After reflecting a little more, I'm not sure that McKnight really is misunderstood as much as I outline here, but that his methodology is being ignored. Keller is not using the whole of the Bible to define the gospel and I think that if individual salvation is thought to be central then the passages that are being used are not being understood properly. The gospel is about Jesus, but even if you say the gospel is about salvation it should be stated that it is the salvation of God's people, which includes individuals when they put their faith in Jesus. Even Paul continues to say that God's people is Israel. We are simply grafted in (Rom 9-11).