We feel it when we hear a tragic news story or sit in the quiet of our restless thoughts. We sense it when we watch a hero fall in a movie or hear the final note of a song that stirs us in ways we can’t explain. It’s a strange, persistent ache—the sense that the world is not as it should be and that we’re caught in the middle of something that’s both glorious and broken.

Man has tried to explain this ache in a thousand ways. Philosophers have turned it into a question of meaning. Historians look for patterns to make sense of the chaos. Psychologists call it the longing for transcendence .

But what if the mysterious longing is not mere trickery of the mind, or some stray spark flung by nature’s indifferent hand? What if it’s not a hollow echo of human imagination but a waymark, a whisper from beyond the walls of the world?

The gospel of Jesus Christ is the answer to this longing. It is the story of what’s wrong with the world but also of how God is making all things new. It is a story so beautiful and vast that it is the source of every human longing and the foundation of all goodness, beauty, and truth.

But here’s the problem: we often reduce the gospel to something small. We sometimes treat it as a list of rules, an abstract idea, or even an emotional experience. In doing so, we miss the grand, sweeping narrative at the heart of the gospel—the ultimate story that, yes, informs us, but, more importantly, transforms us (2 Cor 5:17).

A Story Too Vast for Human Categories

Over the centuries, man has sought to grasp the gospel by employing various disciplines that may play a role in illuminating aspects of God’s revelation, but cannot fully contain it. Like a single candle attempting to light a vast cathedral, these disciplines cast shadows and glimpses of the divine but fall short of its glory.

The Gospel is not philosophy. Throughout church history, philosophy has served as a handmaiden to theology, clarifying and articulating important doctrines. Plato’s vision of the eternal forms helped early Christians articulate the Trinity. Aristotle’s concept of causality aided the church in understanding the Lord’s Table as it relates to the presence of Christ, in one way or another. Later, Kant’s idealism spoke to the freedom of the human soul, resonating with the Christian belief in human responsibility.

And yet, philosophy remains insufficient. When we lean too heavily on it, God risks becoming an abstraction, reduced to a metaphysical principle or a first cause. Consider the danger of Thomism, which—though brilliant in its own right—tended to cast God as an Aristotelian “Unmoved Mover,” stripping away his relational and redemptive nature. Or think of how the Council of Chalcedon’s careful use of Platonic categories inadvertently made God feel distant, an ideal form rather than the personal, incarnate Savior we meet in Jesus Christ. Philosophy, therefore, may help clarify truths about God, but it cannot generate or embody them.

The Gospel is not merely history. History records the rise of Rome and the fall of Byzantium, the faith of Augustine and the failings of Henry VIII, the signing of the Magna Carta and the storming of Normandy—moments that shaped the world and encultured human destiny. Likewise, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is a historical event central to the Christian faith. Without it, as the Apostle Paul declared, our faith is futile and we are still in our sins (1 Cor 15:17).

Yet history alone cannot hold the gospel. It is not enough to know historically that Jesus lived, died, and rose again, for even the demons know that (James 2:19). History as a category is too small. It can describe human events, but the gospel is the story of divine intervention—of God stepping down into time and space to redeem and restore (Gen 3:8; Gen 11:5; Gen 18:21; Ex 3:8; Ex 19:20; Ex 34:5; Num 11:25; 2 Chr 7:1; Ps 18:9; Isa 64:1; Mic 1:3; Matt 1:23; John 1:14; Luke 2:11; Gal 4:4).

The resurrection is not just a moment in history; it is the moment that redefines all of history.

The Gospel is not psychology or emotion. Schleiermacher famously placed the essence of faith in a feeling of “absolute dependence” on God. While it is true that the gospel stirs the heart and awakens our deepest longings, it is not reducible to a feeling or psychological experience. Feelings shift and change like the tides, but the gospel is rooted in the eternal, unchanging Word of God, whose promises endure forever, regardless of how we might feel about them.

The Gospel is not simply ethics. Throughout history, there has been a temptation to make the gospel about morality—a set of rules to follow or behaviors to imitate. But the gospel is not a ladder we climb to reach God; it is a rescue mission carried out by God himself.

Think of how often this reduction has occurred. In the hands of moral philosophers like Jordan Peterson, the Sermon on the Mount becomes a manifesto for human progress rather than a revelation of God’s kingdom. When the gospel becomes primarily about our work—what we do rather than what God has done—it becomes a burden too heavy to bear, stripping it of its life-giving power. On such occasions, the handmaidens of philosophy, history, et al. start to act as wife.

To be sure, each of these disciplines—philosophy, history, emotion, and ethics—offers valuable insights. They illuminate aspects of the gospel’s truth, but they cannot contain it. The gospel is not merely an idea to be debated, a fact to be recorded, a feeling to be experienced, or a rule to be followed. It is a story—a cosmic drama of redemption, authored by God himself, unfolding across the ages and reaching its crescendo in Jesus Christ.

The Gospel as Story

As the story goes, in the beginning, the world was spoken into being by the voice of its Creator, a song of power and purpose that called forth light from darkness and shaped the heavens. The earth was adorned as an orchard, rich with beauty and life, where the trees and streams bore the mark of the Maker’s delight. Here, in this realm unmarred by shadow, all things flourished under the blessing of their Creator, and man walked in peace with his Maker (Gen 1–2).

But it was not to remain so. A shadow crept into the garden, subtle and treacherous, born of rebellion. The shadow spread, twisting what was good, and the concord of the world was broken.

Sorrow entered where joy had dwelt; suffering grew where life had flourished. The bond between man and his Creator was severed, and all of creation groaned under the weight of this great undoing, awaiting the day when the wrong might be set right (Gen 3).

Yet this was not the end of the story. Even as humanity fell, God spoke of redemption. A Savior was promised—a serpent-crusher who would restore what was lost (Gen 3:15). The gospel is the story of this Savior, Jesus Christ, the true hero who steps into the brokenness of the world to redeem it.

Aristotle argued in Poetics that stories have the power to evoke katharsis—an emotional purification or transformation—that moves people in ways that logical argument alone cannot. Jesus himself understood this, for he often taught in parables—small stories that carried within them the vastness of God’s kingdom. As it turns out, stories have a way of bypassing the walls around our hearts, inviting us to see with fresh eyes (i.e., 2 Sam 12:1–7).

But there is a danger in speaking of the gospel purely as a “story.” In our modern age, the term “story” is often misunderstood. Stories are thought to be fiction, products of the imagination, ways to entertain or inspire—but not necessarily ways to reveal the ultimate truth. To reduce the gospel to “just a story” would bring us to the same dead end as treating it as philosophy, history, ethics, or psychology.

The gospel is not merely a story we tell; it is a story we live in. It is not a tale created by man to make sense of the world; it is the narrative written by God that explains all things. It is not bound by human imagination but transcends it, for it is both mythic and historical, personal and cosmic, deeply human and severely divine. As Tolkien wrote, the gospel is the “true myth”—the one story that fulfills all others, not because it is untrue, but because it is the ultimate truth in which all others find their meaning.

Living the Story

When we see the gospel as the ultimate story of stories, it changes everything.

• It gives us meaning. History is not random or chaotic. God’s narrative is written as an epic tale, and our lives are sentences in His unfolding masterpiece.
• It gives us identity. In Christ, we are not defined by our personal failures or successes but by His divine love and grace, which are part of His overarching story.
• It gives us hope. The story ends with the triumph of good, the renewal of all things, and the reign of the true King (not tears and death, which mark our present age) (Rev 21–22).

The Joy Beyond the Walls of the World

In his writings, Tolkien often spoke of a joy “beyond the walls of the world” that pierces like a sword and leaves us longing for more. The gospel is that joy. It is the eucatastrophe—the sudden, joyous turn that transforms despair into hope, standing in contrast to a cataclysmic catastrophe. The gospel story reveals that when all seemed lost, we learned we had been found in the heart of the Author before the first word of the story was written (Eph 1:4–5).

Jared Wellman is the pastor of Tate Springs in Arlington, Texas. Jared has earned a Bachelor of Arts in Biblical Studies (2007) and a Master of Arts in Philosophy (2010) from Criswell College, a Ph.D. in Theology from South Africa Theological Seminary (2018), and a Th.M. and Ph.D. from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Apologetics. Jared has been married to Amanda since 2006 and they have four children.