What is the Gospel?
What exactly is the Gospel? Or more specifically, what is the Christian message? What is the main point of Christianity as a belief system?
The Gospel means Good News. It is the best news that has ever been spoken in the history of this universe. Out of all the news that has ever been promoted, the Gospel is infinitely greater news. It is a message that has more meaning and power and impact than any other idea that could ever be. Why? Because of the absolutely terrifying bad news. There is a God and we will meet Him one day. That's not bad news in itself, that actually sounds awesome right? Good news isn't and can't be good unless there is something less than good that exists. Goodness is only good in light of bad. The bad news is that we are naturally at odds with God. Actually, the Bible says that we are at enmity with God, meaning we are His enemies. What? This is not the type of thing popularly preached in American Churches today. How am I, how are you, an enemy of God? I try to do good, I feel like I'm a pretty good person. You probably are! The problem is that we have to measure ourselves by God's standard of morality, not ours. His standard is perfection. That is the problem. Indeed He loves us. But His justice demands a penalty for our sin, or breaking His law. Psalm 7:11 says.
"God is a just judge,
And God is angry with the wicked every day."
God created man for relationship with Himself. Man (as in all of humanity) sinned in the beginning and fell from a state of perfect harmony and love with God and with each other. Sin is Rebellion against this God who is utterly Holy and pure. The desire that caused this original sin was the desire to be our own god and go our own way, to do our own thing. You can feel it in yourself as you read this. That sin has spread into all of us like a cancer and we are therefore all born with a rebellious nature. Autonomy is the golden calf idolized in our hearts. Not all aspects of autonomy are bad. But when autonomy demands departure from the God who made us and from any sense of community, we cross into idolatry. We are therefore all under God's judgment because we are all under our sin. Nothing impure can endure the presence of God. He is holy, He is just and He embodies perfect justice. This may sound like a good thing on the surface but here’s the problem. If an appointment with perfect justice demanded a comprehensive examination of our lives, we all know how quickly we would be begging for mercy. Probably in the first 2 minutes. Yet we demand justice for ourselves when we are wronged. The extent that we will go to seek out justice against those who have offended us is astounding. We will fight and seek to kill those we once loved, we will spend our entire fortune and the best minutes of our lives to attempt to seek justice fulfilled against someone who hurt us. How twisted can we be? We have some sense that justice is needed and yet we don’t want it aimed at us. Even creation itself demands a certain sense of justice. We all sense that things should be "fair" beginning from early toddlerhood. So here we have a sense of right and wrong. We also simultaneously have this inherent sense that we are not perfect, we make mistakes yet we hate that fact. So we most commonly become prideful and deny, or extremely downplay, our sin. Or we become so fixated on our errors that it eats us up and destroys our confidence in who we are. Have you ever met someone like this? They can barely walk across the room without beating themselves up, much less go to the grocery store without feeling constant shame at being such a "moron". It’s so ingrained into our very nature. As birds have wings, so we humans err. It’s probably the most often quoted cliche of our time. “You’re only human, so sure you’ll make mistakes!” “To err is human, to forgive is divine.” And so on. So here we have 2 opposing inherent truths about ourselves. We demand justice and grasp the need for it and yet we can’t measure up to any standard of justice. Every standard of justice we come up with will leave us guilty. Any person’s attempt at defining perfect justice will leave every person who has every lived guilty. Except one person.
“But we are all like an unclean thing, And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; We all fade as a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind, Have taken us away.” Isaiah 64:6 NKJV
“What then? Are we better than they? Not at all. For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin. As it is written: “There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; They have together become unprofitable; There is none who does good, no, not one.” “Their throat is an open tomb; With their tongues they have practiced deceit”; “The poison of asps is under their lips”; “Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.” “Their feet are swift to shed blood; Destruction and misery are in their ways; And the way of peace they have not known.” “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”
Romans 3:9-20, 23 NKJV
Establishing this divide between justice and our ability, we can begin to relate when the Bible explains the chasm between God and man (it still feels funny saying “man” in our culture’s context). This is the foundation upon which the good news was called good news. Men and women understood their insufficiency to stand before any sense of justice, much less a God Who is a divine being, embodying the fullness of perfect justice Himself and demanding that same perfection from us. This is a definite call for some serious anxiety! Yes, God demands form us that which we are unable to do. How in the world is that fair?! Talking about fairness and justice, wouldn’t the basic premise of justice begin with demanding only within ability? Some may say so. But nature doesn’t demand that. There is a definite difference between justice and fairness. Fairness is about equality. Justice is about rightness, regardless of ability. Everybody has an inherent ability at any moment to do right. The problem is that we are infected with this disease. And we can’t save ourselves from it. We can’t cure it. But that’s what all religion is and aims to accomplish. Trying to work our way to God or to a state of perfection or Nirvana. Why? Because we know we are not as we should be. But how do we know what we should be? Perhaps there still exists in us a remnant of a sense that we were once perfect and we are not as we should be or once were. Why is the entire human race gasping for perfection everywhere? The entire New Testament builds upon this and all Biblical OT stories point to a coming messiah who will take away the sins of the world. This is the cure, that God comes to us, makes a way for justice to be satisfied and yet our guilt to be pardoned. The good news of the Gospel is where the Bible says,
“but God, being rich in mercy poured out His love toward us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”
“But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law. Or is He the God of the Jews only? Is He not also the God of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also, since there is one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. Do we then make void the law through faith? Certainly not! On the contrary, we establish the law.”
Romans 3:21-31 NKJV
The epicenter of all of scripture culminates at the cross. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is not only the great crescendo but aim of all of Scripture. This gap or chasm between man and God is of such magnitude that we cannot bridge it ourselves. It's silly to think we could. Once we understand the depths of God's standard for perfection, and the terror of His intrinsic holiness can we fully realize our inadequacy to stand before Him after even one second of our life. All we naturally do is sin. It is natural for us to desire goodness and purity but we find ourselves unable to fulfill that purity and goodness. Like Paul says in Romans 7,
“For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.”
Romans 7:15-25 NKJV
Once we realize our inability to perform we will discover our need for a Savior. I recognize this sounds like a certain defeatism mindset. But quite to the contrary, a reasonable person will not stubbornly determine to long jump 1000 feet once he discovers his best attempts have only put him at 7 feet out. Nor will he resolve to swim 500 miles from a deserted island to home when he fatigues at 1 mile. He will accept his natural inability and recognize his need of a life boat. These comparisons are like a dot compared to a mile long line when contrasted to our ability and God’s perfect law. This is what Jesus came to fulfill for us, the law. He came to save us from the wrath to come and to fully bridge the gap that we can't properly bridge ourselves in order to restore to us a right union with God. Christianity is about relationship with God through a relationship with Jesus Christ, accomplished by our faith in His life, death and resurrection. Jesus came to live a perfect life that we need to stand before God, to take Gods wrath upon Himself which our sinful choices deserve so that “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
When a man or woman places their faith in Jesus Christ they are letting go of the belief and desire to work their own way to God, repent of their sinful life and trust in Christ alone for their eternal life. There is work required to earn salvation but it's not our work. The work God requires of us He has fulfilled for us. Faith in Christ therefore accomplished what St. Augustine called to the great exchange. We exchange our sin for Christ's perfection. He takes our robes of sin and clothes us with His robes of perfection so that we can stand righteous, blameless, pure and holy before the judgement throne of God, as if Christ were standing there on our behalf. We are in Christ and He In us. He came to save people from their sin and the effects of their sin which is enmity and estrangement from God and the deception that we can find any meaning and satisfaction apart from him. He saves us from that into a loving relationship with Him so that we can enjoy Him and His presence forever. It is the epitome of what we were designed for. "Our hearts are forever restless until they find their rest in thee.” Our chief end in life is and always has been to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever and that is only accomplished through following Jesus. We are then given His Spirit to strengthen and do something called sanctify, which is simply His work in our lives designed to make us more like Jesus throughout our time on earth. HE purifies our desires, actions, thoughts, emotions. HE gives us power to persevere and trust Him. HE gives us a strange peace that transcends all human comprehension. Our relationship with Jesus sets us free to die to ourselves and our selfish desires which strangely frees us from the bondage of our selfishness. The riches of knowing Christ are for now and eternity. There is a peace and an irresistible rest that comes from knowing God as our Father by spending time with Jesus in His Word and in prayer.
We pray that the Lord gives an understanding to your mind as you read this. If you have any questions or need further clarification on any of the above content, please feel free to reach out and contact us. We would be happy to talk, explain and even lead you in prayer to giving your life over to Christ. If you have no Church, we can help you find a good one in your area. God bless.
https://www.ligonier.org/blog/what-is-the-gospel/
