Barth on the Simplicity of the Gospel

“Basically, the gospel is a very simple thing.  The gospel is no system of this or that truth, no theory on life in time and eternity, no metaphysics or the like, but simply the sign that God has blessed the world, this poor world in which we live, with all its difficulties, with all its misery, with this whole ocean of death.  And in this world we dare to live in the knowledge that God loves us, but not only us Christians who believe that God loves the whole world [cf. John 3:16].  Every person, even the most miserable, the most evil, is loved by God.  This is the privilege: to be commissioned and enabled as a Christian to proclaim that.”1

  1. Karl Barth, Barth in Conversation: Volume 2, 1963, ed. Eberhard Busch (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2018, 216.

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