There is a word that gets used so often in church circles that most of us have stopped asking what it actually means. That word is gospel. We sing about it, preach about it, and build entire communities around it — yet the full weight of what it means, where it comes from, and why it matters is something that can genuinely transform the way we think about sharing our faith.
Going Back to the Beginning
Around 800 years before Jesus was born, a Hebrew prophet named Isaiah wrote these striking words: "How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation."
The image Isaiah is painting is vivid. An ancient city waits anxiously while a battle rages somewhere beyond the mountains. A messenger appears on the ridge. Everyone strains to read the signs — his posture, his pace, whether he carries arms or slumps with grief. Then, as he draws near, they see it: he is running with joy. The battle has been won. The city is safe. And the word Isaiah uses for this announcement of victory, in Hebrew, is besorah — good news, glad tidings.
When later scribes translated his words into Greek, they reached for the closest equivalent they had: euangelion. Hold onto that word, because its journey through history is remarkable.
A Legend That Shaped a Tradition
Jump forward roughly three centuries to 490 BC, and you arrive at one of the most famous battles in ancient history — Marathon. The Persian Empire, the greatest military power on earth, had landed nearly 600 ships and around 20,000 soldiers on the plain of Marathon, 25 miles northeast of Athens. Against them stood just 10,000 Athenians and a small allied force. Sparta, famously, had declined to join, citing a religious festival.
The Athenian general Miltiades made a decision that looked like madness: he thinned his centre and loaded his flanks, gambling everything on encircling the Persian force rather than meeting it head-on. It worked. The most feared army in the world broke and fled. Greece was saved.
Legend tells us that a runner named Pheidippides then covered the 26.2 miles from the battlefield to Athens without stopping, burst into the city gasping, and delivered his message in a single word — Nenikekamen, meaning "We have won" — before collapsing and dying. The story gripped the ancient world so deeply that when the first modern Olympics were staged in Athens in 1896, they created a race in his honour that we still run today: the marathon.
What matters here is the word used for what Pheidippides carried. It was a euangelion — a proclamation of victory, an announcement that changed everything for those who heard it.
The Gospel of Caesar
Fast forward again, this time to 9 BC, just under a decade before Jesus was born. The Roman Empire now dominates the world, with a new emperor: Caesar Augustus. A provincial governor in what we now call Turkey issued a decree redesigning the calendar so the new year would begin on Augustus’s birthday. The decree, inscribed in stone and later discovered by archaeologists, includes these extraordinary words:
"The birthday of Augustus has been for the whole world the beginning of the gospel concerning him… Caesar, the common good fortune of all, the beginning of life and vitality… sent to us as Saviour, has put an end to the war and set all things in order."
Divine. Saviour. The beginning of a new age of peace. This was Rome’s official story about itself — and they called it a euangelion. The gospel of Caesar was the good news spreading out from Rome into every province of the empire.
Then Jesus
Into this exact world — under Caesar’s census, under Caesar’s tax, patrolled by Caesar’s soldiers — Jesus is born. He lives, dies, and rises again. And then, sometime in the late 50s AD, a man we now call Mark sits down to write what is likely the very first full written account of Christ’s life. He knows exactly whose gospel has been filling the public square for decades. He knows the military and historical depth of euangelion. And he begins with this: "The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God."
When you understand the history, this is not merely a religious opening line. It is a political declaration. Mark is directly and subversively challenging the most powerful empire the world has ever seen. He is saying: there is another gospel, there is a greater king, there is a truer peace — and the Saviour’s name is not Augustus. It is Jesus.
The News That Would Not Stop
From that moment, the euangelion of Jesus began to travel. Jesus announced the kingdom of God with kind words amongst ordinary people. After his death and resurrection, women ran from an empty tomb with a witness statement that no one yet had a framework for: Jesus was not dead. He was alive. That news was shared incredulously by twelve disciples, then by hundreds, then by thousands on the day of Pentecost. Like concentric circles spreading outward, like a wildfire, it moved from person to person, generation to generation.
In Acts 4, when Peter and John are hauled before the authorities and commanded to stop talking about Jesus, their answer is simple: "We cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard."
Then Paul — originally a fierce persecutor of the church — has a dramatic encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus and spends the rest of his life as a witness. Writing to the church in Rome, he quotes Isaiah directly: "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news." He is closing a loop that stretches back eight centuries, gathering all the weight of the euangelion into one place and then — crucially — placing it in our hands.
What Is a Witness?
A witness, simply put, is a person who has seen or can give firsthand evidence of some event. In a legal sense, a witness testifies to things within their own knowledge. And so, as people who follow Jesus, this is what we are called to testify: the things we have seen God do, the things we have encountered in him, the life we have found in him, the truths we have come to know. You do not need to be a spiritual expert. You do not need to have all the answers. You just need a testimony and the courage to share it.
It is worth noting that everyone in the world is already a witness to some gospel. Whether it is the gospel of mindfulness, free-market capitalism, the latest diet trend, or a favourite podcast — everyone witnesses about things that have impacted and changed their lives. We love to recommend what we have found helpful. The question is not whether you are sharing a gospel, but which gospel you are sharing.
Why Do We Witness?
The motivation matters enormously here. We do not share the good news of Jesus to impress God, to earn our place in heaven, or to win cultural arguments. We share it because we love people — and because Jesus loves people. Paul puts it like this in 2 Corinthians 5: "Christ’s love compels us." That is the driving force. Love for God and love for others.
Throughout the Gospels, Jesus is described as being moved by compassion again and again. He saw people who were lost, scattered, without purpose or meaning — and that compassion propelled him to share the truth of who God is. It is the same reason John 3:16 begins with those words: "For God so loved the world." That love is our primary motivation as witnesses too.
How Do We Do It?
There is no single formula, but wisdom and gentleness matter enormously — especially in a world that carries a lot of baggage around faith. Research into how people come to faith in Western, secular contexts suggests there are broadly five thresholds that many people need to cross:
- Trusting a Christian — moving from distrust to trust by building a genuine relationship with a follower of Jesus who is honest, humble, and consistent.
- Becoming curious — beginning to wonder whether there might be more to life than their current worldview.
- Opening to change — moving from a closed position to a willingness to ask questions and consider a different way of seeing the world.
- Seeking after God — actively pursuing truth: picking up a Bible, trying prayer, making intentional decisions to explore faith.
- Crossing the line — making a decision to follow Jesus.
This framework is helpful because it reminds us to start with where people are, not where we are. Listening, empathising, and walking alongside someone is often far more powerful than delivering a rehearsed presentation. And sometimes, the most important thing is simply to sit with someone in their pain and let them experience love.
A Few Practical Starting Points
If you are wondering how to begin, here are some simple ways to step into this:
- Pray. Who in your life does not yet know Jesus? Start by praying for them regularly. Witness begins long before a single word is spoken.
- Think. Put yourself in other people’s shoes. Allow compassion to grow in you for those around you who are struggling, grieving, or searching. As compassion grows, witness will naturally come across as love rather than obligation.
- Be brave. It takes courage to identify yourself as a follower of Jesus in many spaces today. But studies suggest that openness to spirituality is actually growing in our cultural moment. Your story might travel further than you think.
- Commit to something. Take a concrete step — whether that is inviting someone for a conversation, hosting a small Alpha group, or simply deciding to be more intentional in one relationship.
Your Turn to Run
For two thousand years, this euangelion has travelled from witness to witness, from generation to generation. Somewhere along that line, someone with beautiful feet brought it to you. Perhaps it was a parent, a friend, a stranger — someone who had encountered something real and simply could not keep it to themselves. However imperfectly they ran, the news got through.
Now it is our turn. The ancient feet on the mountain are our feet. The good news is ours to carry. And the world around us — including the people in our offices, our families, our friendship groups — still needs to hear it.
