The Truth of the Gospel Is Jesus

Most school children grow up with the story of Aesop, famous for his clever and pointed fables. They may be as important in English and American culture as they were to the Greeks. Most of us have at least a few of the fables of Aesop planted in our memories. Maybe the Dog in the Manger, perhaps the Fox and the Crow, almost certainly the Tortoise and the Hare.

But who was Aesop? Most stories have him living in the 6th century BC. Some say he was a slave, others a mid- to senior-level civic leader; one tradition makes him an advisor to Croesus. The 2004 Encyclopaedia Britannica entry says, "An Egyptian biography of the 1st century AD places him on the island of Samos as a slave who gained his freedom from his master, thence going to Babylon as riddle solver to King Lycurgus, and, finally, meeting his death at Delphi."

There are lots of traditions describing how he lived, how he died, how he looked, and what he did. Ultimately, though it doesn't matter. The wisdom of the fables of Aesop does not come from Aesop. It does not matter whether he was socially prominent or simply a slave or maybe even, like Uncle Remus, a folklorist's invention to give narrative unity to a diverse collection of unrelated tales.

The fables of Aesop are not fables about Aesop but fables that come from Aesop. But even at that, Aesop himself does not matter. In these fables, the truth of the tale is in the telling, not the teller. Whether the stories originated from Aesop or Phaedrus or an anonymous village sage does not matter. The stories still have truth.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is different from the fables of Aesop. It is not a collection of wise sayings Jesus gave in parables and sermons and wondrous deeds. There is a kind of truth in those sayings, a kind of truth that is shared with wise sayings from many other sources. That truth is worth hearing. But the gospel of Jesus Christ is far more than the sayings of Jesus Christ.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is not a gospel from Jesus, it is the gospel about Jesus. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not the truth he told us, but the truth that he is. What is true about the gospel of Jesus Christ is true in his name. His wondrous birth that opens the way for us to have a new birth. His death as an offering for our sin. His resurrection to open the way of victory over death. The truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ is in the one who originally lived it.

Apart from Aesop the fables still stand. Apart from Jesus, there is no gospel.