The Gospel

What is this “Gospel” of which we so often speak and write? What is this “good news”?

In school I learned to define my terms in the introductory paragraph of essays and papers, but here on this blog we have failed to clearly articulate what we mean when we say Gospel. Sorry it’s taken so long, but I hope this post will clarify what we believe to be the greatest, most momentous truth in the world.

The Gospel is the power of Jesus Christ to save the world from brokenness and sin. The Gospel is the story of redemption found in the Bible—God’s Word given to humankind. It’s an amazing thing that affects everyone. Everyone throughout time. Everyone in every country, from every race, in every religion.

Let me backtrack a bit:

The Bible tells us that God created the world, and it was good. But then sin entered through the first man Adam and his wife Eve. They chose to disobey God’s command, and we all know pain and depravity because of this so called “fall”. Romans 3:23 says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” We still see the effects of the fall every day. People are deeply selfish and we live in depravity. You don’t have to look far to see sin: children scream and yell when they don’t get what they want, and adults often do the same in more subtle ways. The sad part is that we often go after things that are not good for us, and God is trying to protect us from those harmful things by giving us His law.

Because of sin, God must judge humankind. God is perfectly just and perfectly righteous and perfectly holy, so He cannot allow lawbreaking to go unpunished. Romans says that the wages of sin is death. All men will die, and after that we deserve to live forever in eternal punishment—hell—because we have transgressed the law of the holy God our creator.

BUT, the great news—the Gospel—is that while we were unable to pay the debt we owed God, Jesus came down as God incarnate to the earth to take our punishment, pay our debt, die in our place. The apostle Paul writes to the church in Rome, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Most people in America have heard of “John 3:16,” but that verse of the Bible is not the trademark of the Christian faith for no good reason. Read this carefully: “God so loved the world that He sent His one and only son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life.” Our God, the LORD Almighty, is a loving God, who though fully just, does not want any man to perish. He came to earth in the form of a human and was killed on a cross—the worst of Roman punishments—so that His death while remaining sinless might take the penalty of all our sin upon Him. Wow! Now that is cool.

Jesus didn’t have to die for us. He actually sweat blood the night of His arrest because of the indescribable agony and stress of what lay ahead. He was beaten, crushed, abused, spit upon, humiliated, stripped and insulted—and He did it for us.

All we have to do is accept Jesus Christ. I’m not exactly sure how to tell when any man or woman crosses that threshold to being a follower of Jesus, but the Bible tells us pretty clearly that “if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”

That’s it. So simple, yet so difficult. The toughest part is accepting Christ’s grace so freely given… and learning to live righteously in response to it.

And this is what’s radically different about Christianity: We come to God in our sin and brokenness and let Him fix us, instead of trying to fix ourselves first. Other religions try to appease a God or gods that are angry with them, through sacrifice or service or good works. But the truth is that God is loving and forgiving towards His creation. He will bring judgment in wrath, but for those who are unrepentant. Only after we have received Christ do we live in holiness through the power of the Holy Spirit. We live righteously and do good works in response to salvation, not to earn it.

Nothing we do can surprise God. He knows how sinful we can be. He knows we can murder, cheat, steal, and be greedy as all get-out, but that’s why He sent Jesus. God knows we will disobey Him, so He waits for us to respond with a contrite heart, accepting the gift which we only have to reach out and accept. He is a loving father, not angry when we fall, but excited when we take our first steps towards Him. God is love.

This is the Gospel.