GOSPEL

The simple answer is the gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ. But why is Jesus Christ good news? While we’re at it, who is Jesus anyway?

To understand the importance of Jesus, we first need to understand the characteristics of God and then why we are to obey him. First, God is Holy, meaning he is perfectly good and not only is he perfectly good he is the source and standard of all goodness. He is also Just, which means that he is unable to ignore sin or look the other way. Another important attribute of God for this discussion is that he is Immutable, meaning that he can not change. In Genesis 1:1 we are told, “In the beginning God Created the heavens and the earth.”, and since he created everything he has the right to tell us how we should live. Therefore, since God is holy, just and unchanging we have to look at ourselves and we don’t measure up. We are the opposite of holy, Romans 3:12 tells us that, “no one does good”. God is Just we are unjust, God is Unchanging we are ever changing. We’re altogether doomed we simply don’t stand a chance and are destined to die in our sins. Romans 3:23 says, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”.

There is nothing we can do to make ourselves better, we have no way of righting our transgressions against the creator and author of life. Therefore, we need a savior. This savior can’t just be a helper for a little while or someone to help us get back on track. He can’t be the grantor of second chances. Even if we had unlimited second chances we would still find ourselves at odds with God’s character and would sin against him again before we took the next breath. We don’t need someone to help us do better, we need someone to do it for us, in our place. We needed someone to live a perfect sinless life and then give us credit for it.

There’s only one person capable of doing that and that is the Son of God, Jesus the Christ. Fully God and simultaneously fully man. In Matthew’s account we see that after Jesus was baptized a voice from heaven said this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased (Matthew 3:17). This is who Jesus is, and through his perfect obedience to the Father, he lived without sin, doing what we could not and then on the cross took on our sin and died the death that we should have died. Though faith in his finished work, he takes all of our sin upon himself, buries our sin with him and defeats sin and death as he physically bodily resurrects from the dead. Having secured our salvation and making it possible for us to be in a right relationship with a Holy and Just God. This is the great exchange, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

This is why Jesus is good news.  Because, we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of god and the wages of sin is death. But, while we were still sinners Christ died for us and the good news is 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 and there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 3:23,6:23,5:8,10:9,8:1).

As wonderful as this message is, it gets even better. Jesus tells us in John 16:7, “Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.” Paul insures that we understand the gravity of what this means in 1 Corinthians 3:16 when he writes, “Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?”. That is indeed good news for every believer, we couldn’t live up to God’s expectation, so Jesus put on flesh, took on the form of a servant and came to earth to give us our salvation and his righteousness and then leaves us with a helper, the third person of the God-head, the Holy Spirt.

We are Justified by Grace alone, through Faith alone, in Christ alone, according to Scripture alone, for the glory of God alone. That’s the gospel, it is simply God in our place. God’s only Son providing eternal life.