What is the Gospel?

The word gospel translates to “good news.” Do you know what this good news is, and is it good news to you? Before we can understand the good news, we have to recognize that there happens to be some really bad news. If I walked up to someone who has never heard of Jesus, and said, “A guy named Jesus died for you.” I am going to start this conversation off with a very confused man.

For the bad news, let’s look in Genesis and a couple other places in the Bible. We are probably familiar with the events around creation. Scripture says God created a world that he calls good and puts man and woman in it. They are given stewardship of all creation to take care of, enjoy, and grow in. They are given the one limitation of not eating from one particular tree. Everything is good at this point. Yet, this goodness did not remain. They are given the ability to choose to love God or to reject Him based on whether or not they eat fruit from this one tree. Just like us in our own rebellion, they chose to reject God and ate the forbidden fruit. You may think that if you were in Adam or Eve’s place, you would not have eaten that fruit. The problem is that we wouldn’t have done any better. We have committed sin, and like Adam and Eve, chosen our own way.

A few things we know about God is that He is just, loving, wrathful, unchanging, and absolutely perfect. What is true about God in portions of biblical text is true about Him in the whole book. He is perfect and just, and so after He saves the Hebrews from Egypt He says that for them to be His people they had to be perfect like Him. He gave 10 commandments for them to follow to be absolutely self righteous. For us, these commandments give us a picture of our spiritual state too. He says to not lie, and not to steal. Liars do not make it to Heaven, nor thieves. He says to have no false idols like money or social status, but worship only Him. Those who worship anyone or anything but God will not be found in Heaven. We are given knowledge of how to be perfect and in His presence, and we willfully fail miserably at it. You know you have broken those rules, and that is why they exist - to condemn. Even if you did not know of the ten commandments, in your heart you know you have broken divine law. Once you break a law, following it perfectly after wouldn't somehow fix that fault. These laws do not give us the power to become right with God, they condemn us by showing how much we have failed in His sight.

God requires the same results for all who have broken His law: separation from Him. You can not be in the presence of perfection and live without also being perfect. In His rightful justice, He says Hell is the only solution for your rebellion. Even though He loves us, God sees sin, hates it, and will not tolerate or let it go unpunished. Yet it isn’t His desire for us to be separated in Hell from Him. He created us to have fellowship and know Him. A judge may not want to punish you for breaking the law, but he knows it is worse and unjust to not have that debt settled. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that God loved us enough to come live the life we could not, and in fulfilling the payment His justice required, He died for our sins. He lived a perfect, sinless life that we could not live. He did not lie or steal. He had neither idols nor envy. His only god was the Creator Himself. He was the one you would find in Heaven, who could truly walk without sin. Yet, he was crucified and treated as if he had committed every sin of every believer. We deserved death for our sin, but Jesus took our place. God poured every drop of His wrath on Christ. Jesus’s resurrection three days later shows us that He satisfied God’s wrath on us, and that we also will now overcome death. He offers this gift to those who believe and trust in Him. It is given to those who repent and turn to Him, that is the requirement - believe and be changed. That is why we can be in Heaven in the presence of God. It is not because we became good enough, but because He became one of us and took our place. This gift is without merit, and unearnably given in love. We did nothing to earn it. Jonathin Edwards said, “We contribute nothing to our salvation but the sin that makes it necessary.” When we turn to Him, He gives us a new life that is incompatible with our former and makes us a changed person. Warren Wiersbe says, “No man can come to Christ by faith and remain the same any more than he can come into contact with a 220-volt wire and remain the same.” Charles Spurgeon wrote Jesus’s reply to Nicodemus as, “I care little about your calling me Master or teacher; for the first entrance into the kingdom of God is, to become a new man.” Has Christ changed your life and made you into someone new?

“Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.”

― Oscar Wilde