The Christian Century

What's the gospel in seven words? We asked theologians, pastors and others both to answer this question and to expand on this in a few sentences. To see all the responses together as they're posted, bookmark this page. Add your own version here. --Ed.

God gets the last word.

In the death and resurrection of Jesus it is clear that our God is the kind of God who insists on having the last word. To be sure, the second-to-last word, which can be very powerful, can be given to something else--despair, estrangement, hurt, evil, even death. But our God insists on having the very last word, and that is always a word of hope, of reconciliation, of healing, of goodness and of life.