What is the
Gospel?
Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.
1 Corinthians 15:1-4 (ESV)
The gospel is the good news about what Jesus Christ has done to reconcile sinners to God. Here’s the whole story:
- The one and only God, who is holy, made all humanity in His image to know him (Gen. 1:26-28).
- However, we all sinned and cut ourselves off from Him (Gen. 3; Rom. 3:23).
- In His great love, God sent His Son, Jesus, to come as King and rescue humanity from our own sin (Ps. 2; Luke 1:67-79).
- Jesus established His kingdom by acting as both a mediating priest and a priestly sacrifice—He lived a perfect life and died on the cross, thus fulfilling the law Himself and taking on Himself the punishment for the sins of the world (Mark 10:45; John 3:16; Heb. 7:26; Rom. 3:21-26, 5:12-21; 1 John 2:2). Then He rose again from the dead, showing that God accepted His sacrifice and that God’s wrath against humanity had been exhausted (Acts 2:24, Rom. 4:25).
- He now calls all people to repent of their sins and trust in Christ alone for our forgiveness (Acts 17:30, John 1:12). If we repent of our sins and trust in Christ, we are born again into a new life--an eternal life with God (John 3:16).
Now that’s good news!
A good way to summarize this good news is to biblically unpack the words God, Man, Christ, and Response.
- God. God is the creator of all things (Gen. 1:1). He is perfectly holy, worthy of all worship, and will punish sin (1 John 1:5, Rev. 4:11, Rom. 2:5-8).
- Man. All people, though created good, have become sinful by nature (Gen. 1:26-28, Ps. 51:5, Rom. 3:23). From birth, all people are alienated from God, hostile to God, and subject to the wrath of God (Eph. 2:1-3).
- Christ. Jesus Christ, who is fully God and fully man, lived a sinless life, died on the cross to bear God’s wrath in the place of all, and rose from the grave in order to give his people eternal life (John 1:1, 1 Tim. 2:5, Heb. 7:26, Rom. 3:21-26, 2 Cor. 5:21, 1 Cor. 15:20-22).
- Response. God calls everyone everywhere to repent of their sins and trust in Christ in order to be saved (Mark 1:15, Acts 20:21, Rom. 10:9-10).
(Some of this material has been adapted from The Gospel and Personal Evangelism by Mark Dever, p. 43)