What is the Gospel?
In Old English, "gospel" literally means "good news"—the good news of Jesus Christ!
Why is Jesus good news?
Jesus is good news because God the Father, in love, sent Jesus, the Son of God, to perfectly live the life we needed to live and to sufficiently die the death we needed to die. In short, Jesus had to come and save us.
Why did Jesus need to save us?
To understand the necessity of Jesus having to save us, we must first understand “sin.”
Sin is something that came into the world when the first two people God created in His image disobeyed Him in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3). As a result, sin came into the world and into everyone (Romans 5:12).
The effects of sin corrupt our whole being: our horizontal relationships with others, and most importantly, our vertical relationship with God. We do things we ought not to do AND we don’t do things we ought to do, namely to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love our neighbors as ourselves (Deuteronomy 6:5; Matthew 22:37-40; Mark 12:30-31). Sin brings disorder, brokenness, misery, suffering, alienation, death, and the wrath of God (Romans 1:18; 2:6-8; 6:23).
Because God is good and just, He must punish our sin. And we have all sinned and fallen short of God's glory (Romans 3:23).
What must I then do to be saved?
We are not saved from the effects and consequences of sin by proving to God we are good enough or worthy enough (Romans 3:20; Galatians 2:16). No, the Holy Spirit graciously opens our hearts to repent of our sins and to believe in Jesus as a gift (Ephesians 2:8-9)!
And those who believe in Jesus are then united to Jesus—to his life, death, and resurrection.
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His perfect life for righteousness becomes your perfect life for righteousness, which means you now stand justified before God; you are being conformed into the image of His Son; you are adopted into His family forever (Romans 3:21-22; 8:29; Galatians 4:4-5).
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His sufficient death for sins becomes your sufficient death for sins, which means you no longer have to fear the condemnation or wrath of God (Romans 8:1; 2 Corinthians 5:21)
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His bodily resurrection in glory will become your bodily resurrection in glory, which means you will inherit the kingdom of God in the new heaven and new earth (Romans 6:5; 8:30; 1 Corinthians 15; Revelation 21).
This is the Gospel.
This is the Good News of Jesus Christ.
(For a full doctrinal statement, see the Westminster Confession of Faith, Shorter and Larger Catechism)
Questions?
Email us and one of our teaching elders or pastors will reach out to share more!