Sermon: "Why the Good News is Good?"- October 5, 2025

The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, 2 Timothy 1:1-14

The Rev'd C. Patrick Perkins, Rector 

Transcript

Introduction: 

Imagine the streets of a Roman city: dust swirls in the morning sun, merchants hawk their wares, children dart between carts, and the aroma of bread mingles with the sweat and dust of the marketplace. Then, suddenly, a trumpet sounds, cutting through the clamor. A royal herald mounts the platform, his voice ringing out across the forum: The emperor has arrived! He has conquered his enemies! His empire is secure, and the world now rests under his dominion! 

People pause—some bow, some bristle, some cheer—but all listen. 

The message they’ve just heard is known as a euangelion, a Greek word meaning simply “good news.” In the Roman world, a eu-angelion was no ordinary announcement. It carried the full weight of imperial authority: the assurance of victory, the promise of peace, and the demand for loyalty to the empire’s king. 

In our Epistle this morning, we find Paul in a Roman prison, writing to his young protégé Timothy. Arrested for proclaiming that Jesus of Nazareth is both Israel’s Messiah and the true Lord of the world, Paul dares to use that same loaded word—euangelion—to describe his message. The resonance is deliberate, but the meaning is revolutionary. 

The “good news” Paul proclaims is not about a warrior prince who conquers by might, nor about a dominion enforced through coercion and fear. It is about a crucified rabbi who, having risen from the dead, vindicated his claim to be both Son of David and Son of God. The kingdom inaugurated by this Jesus does not resemble Rome’s empire. Where Caesar rules by compulsion, Jesus reigns by grace. Where Caesar maintains power through the fear of death, Jesus triumphs by destroying death itself. And where Caesar offers his subjects only a fragile peace in the present, Jesus grants salvation that endures into eternity. 

Grace, life, and hope—these are the hallmarks of the euangelion Paul proclaims. And this, he insists, is the true Gospel: the announcement that in Jesus Christ, God has acted once and for all to save his people—by grace, from death, and for the future. 

Let us look more closely at Paul’s words to Timothy, and see why this announcement, more than any other, deserves to be called good news. 

Exposition:

I. The Gospel Is Salvation by Grace 

Paul writes that God “saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace.” In those few words, he overturns the whole moral economy of the ancient world—and, if we’re honest, of the modern world as well. 

In Paul’s day, the gods of Rome were patrons. They dispensed favor in proportion to one’s offerings, sacrifices, and honors. Worship was transactional: do the right things, keep the gods happy, and they might keep the peace. The divine economy ran on exchange, not grace. 

But the God whom Paul proclaims does not barter with humanity. God gives freely what no human merit could ever secure. “By grace you have been saved through faith,” he tells the Ephesians, “and this is not your own doing—it is the gift of God.” Grace, for Paul, is not an attitude of leniency but an act of divine generosity. It is God’s own self-giving in Christ. 

Theologically, Paul’s claim is staggering. It means that salvation begins not with human striving but with divine initiative. The source of the Gospel lies “before the ages began,” in God’s eternal purpose—a grace already given in Christ before any human response was possible. In other words, grace precedes not only merit but even history itself. 

This is why Paul insists that the Gospel can never be reduced to moral improvement or religious performance. The Christian life is not a ladder by which we climb toward God; it is a life lived in the awareness that God has already come down to us. The initiative is God’s; our calling is to receive. 

And because salvation is by grace, it can never become the pos-session of the proud. It humbles the self-made and lifts the un-worthy. It opens a door that achievement can never unlock. In the logic of grace, the only qualification is need. “While we were still sinners,” Paul writes in Romans, “Christ died for us.” God does not wait for our worthiness; God creates it. 

To receive this Gospel, then, is to abandon the illusion that we can earn our way into divine favor and save ourselves. It is to entrust ourselves wholly to a mercy that originates outside of us—“the power of God,” Paul says, “who saved us and called us.” This is not a passive surrender but an awakening to reality. Grace does not abolish effort; it transforms it. We strive not to earn God’s love but because we have already been embraced by it. 

The Gospel is salvation by grace—a grace that descends, trans-forms, and calls us into holiness. But grace does not simply pardon; it also liberates. And this brings us to the second great theme. 

II. The Gospel Is Salvation from Death 

Paul continues: Christ Jesus “abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.” In that single sentence lies the beating heart of the Christian proclamation. 

To the Romans, death was the final guarantor of Caesar’s authority. It was the one power that even the emperor could not escape, yet the fear of it kept his empire in order. To disobey Rome was to risk crucifixion, the most public form of terror the state could wield. Death was the empire’s ultimate argument. 

But Paul proclaims a Gospel that breaks death’s logic altogether. “Christ has been raised from the dead,” he writes to the Corinthians, “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” In Christ’s resurrection, death’s inevitability has been unmasked as a lie. The power that appeared absolute has been undone from within. Death remains, but it is now a defeated enemy, a shadow robbed of its substance. 

To say that Christ “abolished death” is not to deny mortality, but to declare that mortality no longer has the final word. What Rome could only threaten, God has already overcome. This is why Paul can speak of suffering without shame: he has entrusted his life to the One who holds life itself. His imprisonment is not defeat; it is participation in a story that death cannot close. 

The resurrection, then, is not an appendage to Paul’s Gospel—it is its center. Without resurrection, grace would remain abstract and sin’s wages unaltered. But with resurrection, the meaning of grace becomes visible. Grace is not merely forgiveness of the guilty; it is the re-creation of the dead. It is the gift of new being. 

And notice how Paul expresses it: Christ “brought life and immortality to light.” The verb suggests revelation, illumination. What was hidden in God’s purpose “before the ages” is now disclosed in Christ. The resurrection is the unveiling of what grace has always intended: not just pardon for the sinner, but life for the perishing. 

For Paul, this changes everything—not only the future but the present. The one who knows that death is defeated is set free from its tyranny. Those who aren’t afraid of death aren’t afraid of life, either. Fear loses its grip; hope takes its place. The believer becomes, in Paul’s words, “more than a conqueror,” not through power or success, but through faith in the One who conquered death by dying. 

This, too, is why Paul can speak of the Gospel as power—“the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.” Grace is not a sentimental gesture; it is a force that breaks open the tomb. To proclaim the Gospel is not to spread a comforting philosophy but to announce an event that has altered reality itself. 

The Gospel is salvation by grace, yes—but it is grace with resurrection power: salvation from death. 

III. The Gospel Is Salvation for the Future 

Finally, Paul points forward: the grace given “before the ages” and revealed “through the appearing of Christ” is now guarded “until that day.” The Gospel, in other words, is not only about what God has done; it is also about what God will yet do. It is salvation for the future. 

For Paul, the future is not a vague optimism but a concrete hope grounded in the resurrection. The same power that raised Christ from the dead will one day raise us also. “If we have died with him, we will also live with him,” he writes later in this same letter. The horizon of Christian hope stretches beyond death into the life of the world to come. 

But Paul’s vision of the future is not escapist. It is not a ticket out of the world, but the promise of its renewal. “The creation itself,” he tells the Romans, “will be set free from its bondage to decay.” The Gospel does not end in heaven; it culminates in New Creation. God’s future is not the erasure of the world but its transfiguration. 

That is why Paul can speak of salvation as both a present pos-session and a future inheritance. “If anyone is in Christ,” he says, “there is a new creation.” The future has already broken into the present; eternity has entered time. Every act of faith, every work of mercy, every moment of forgiveness participates in that coming world. Christians live, as it were, on the border of two ages—citizens of the kingdom that has come and is yet to come. 

This eschatological tension gives Paul’s Gospel its moral and missionary urgency. Because the future belongs to God, the present cannot be wasted. Because the resurrection has begun, our labor is not in vain. Because death is abolished, even suffering becomes meaningful. Paul can say, “I suffer as I do, but I am not ashamed,” precisely because he knows the outcome: “I know the one in whom I have put my trust.” 

The Gospel, then, is salvation for the future—a future that begins now, unfolds in holiness, and culminates in glory. The same grace that saves us and raises us also sustains us “until that day.” 

Conclusion:

When Paul speaks of the Gospel, he is not describing a mere doctrine or a code of ethics. He is announcing an event—an event with cosmic scope and personal consequence. In Jesus Christ, God has acted by grace, against death, and for the future. 

It is a message that relativizes all earthly powers and redefines all human hopes. The emperor may have his heralds and his decrees, but only Christ has conquered death. Only his kingdom endures. 

And so, like Paul, we are summoned to be heralds of this Gospel—to speak, to live, and if necessary to suffer for it. Not ashamed, but confident. For, like Paul, we know the One in whom we have put our trust, and we are sure that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to us. 

The trumpet still sounds—not from the forum, but from the empty tomb. And its announcement is still good news: 

Grace has triumphed. Death is defeated. The future is secure. The Savior has come, and salvation is ours! AMEN.