When we have typically thought of the gospel in western evangelicalism, it has been around the questions like, “How are my sins forgiven?” and “How do I get to heaven?”
N.T. Wright turns my thinking in a different direction:
The four gospels have very little to say about this topic. Almost nobody talks about “going to heaven.” When Jesus talks about the “kingdom of heaven,” he doesn’t mean a place called “heaven,” but the rule of “heaven,” that is, God’s reign, coming to birth ON EARTH. Almost nobody in the gospels warns about “going to hell.”
Yes, this was a revolutionary shift in my thinking, although I came across it through Greg Boyd. Changes your thinking from a transaction to a ongoing goal.