What is the Gospel? It is "GOOD NEWS"! All Other Religions Only Offer Advice. The Gospel Declares What Jesus Has Done for Our Eternal Salvation! Please Ponder This News!

What is the Gospel? It is "GOOD NEWS"! All Other Religions Only Give Advice. The Gospel Declares What Jesus Has Done for Our Eternal Salvation! Please Ponder This News!

What is the Gospel?

A blog from the pen of our guest blogger today, Nathaniel Beaty of Oklahoma, City. May these words prick your heart and bring you to The Lord Jesus Christ!

“What is the gospel?” This question is a very simple question that has a very simple answer: The gospel, or the good news, refers to the person of Jesus Christ and His work in saving people. So, who is He and why exactly did He save people?

To understand the gospel rightly, one must first understand humanity’s condition before God. The Bible teaches that all people are sinners both by nature and by choice. Yet before there was murder, hatred, division, lying, death, or suffering, there was God’s perfect creation.

The opening chapters of the Bible reveal that God created the heavens and the earth by His word (Gen 1:1). Everything He made was good. Humanity was set apart from the rest of creation because humans were made in the image of God (Gen 1:26-28). Adam and Eve enjoyed fellowship with their Creator, lived in a world free from corruption, and were commissioned to exercise dominion over creation under God’s authority.

This perfect state, however, did not remain. In the Garden of Eden, God commanded Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, warning that disobedience would certainly bring death (Gen 2:16-17). Tempted by the serpent, Adam and Eve rebelled against God (Gen 3:1-7). What appeared outwardly to be a simple act of eating forbidden fruit was cosmic treason.

The consequences for this act were immediate and devastating. Sin entered the world, bringing guilt, corruption, shame, alienation, suffering, and death (Rom 5:12). The entire created order was subjected to the effects of the fall. Still, the worst consequence of all was that Adam, Eve, and all their descendants would be separated from God. The dirty water in a cup is not made clean by pouring the water into a new cup. Therefore, every person descended from Adam now enters the world spiritually dead and totally unable to restore fellowship with God by his own efforts (Eph 2:1-3).

Many people struggle to understand why the penalty for Adam and Eve’s sin was so severe. The answer lies in the One against whom the act was committed. Their sin was not a simple rule violation. It was an imperfect act committed in rebellion to a perfect God. To be perfect, a being cannot be in fellowship with imperfection. So, the fellowship is immediately severed. Here’s the problem with that: God is life and there is no life outside of Him; so, if fellowship with Him is severed it means death and darkness. Therefore, the Bible repeatedly affirms that God is a perfectly righteous judge (Psalm 96:13) and “the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23).

This brings us to what Christians rightly call the “bad news.” Every human being stands guilty before God. We have inherited a fallen nature from Adam and are all, in the words of Ray Comfort, “lying, thieving, adulterers at heart.” Romans 3 tells us that “none is righteous, no, not one” in verse 10, and then again in verse 23 we read that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Left to ourselves, we are under God’s just judgement. No amount of morality, religious activity, sincerity, or good works can remove our guilt or reconcile us to God. Whoever judges or ignores evil because of all the good someone has done is not a just judge. So, God must judge evil because He is perfect, holy, and just.

Yet even in judgment, God reveals His mercy and love. Immediately after the fall, He announced the first promise of redemption. While speaking to the serpent, God declared that the seed of the woman would one day crush the serpent’s head, though He Himself would be wounded in the process (Gen 3:15). This promise became the foundation of redemptive history. Throughout the Old Testament, God progressively revealed His plan to send a Redeemer who would save His people from sin and restore what had been lost.

The covenant promises given to Abraham, the law and sacrificial system codified through Moses, the Davidic kingship, and the prophetic promises of a coming Messiah all pointed forward to the same person. The prophets foretold One who would bear the sins of His people, establish God’s kingdom, and bring salvation to the ends of the earth (Isa 53, Jer. 23:5-6; Mic 5:1-6).

These prophecies point us to Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God who took on flesh and human nature and came into the world as the prophesied Messiah (John 1:1-14). Unlike every descendant of Adam born of natural generation, Jesus was born of a virgin and without being corrupted by the effects of sin. He then obeyed the law completely and never wavered from it, and thus, He lived a perfectly sinless life. He helped the needy and destitute, healed the sick, raised the dead, and taught many people the truth about who God is.

Yet, even with all the amazing things He said and did, the big crescendo of Christ’s work began with His death on the cross. There, the perfect, spotless lamb of God – Jesus Christ – offered Himself up to be sacrificed in the place of all who would believe in Him; dying to pay the penalty of our sins according to the Scriptures (1 Cor 15:3). On the cross, Jesus died bearing the full wrath of God against sin. He was then buried.

Three days later, Christ resurrected from the dead. The resurrection proves that Jesus was who He said He was (God), and that sin and death have been defeated (Rom 4:23-25; 1 Cor 15:20-22). After His resurrection, He appeared to His mother, the disciples, and more than five hundred others. Forty days later, Jesus ascended into heaven, where He now reigns as the sovereign ruler with a name above all names until the day, He returns (Eph. 1:20-23).

So, the bad news is that we are all sinners who stand opposed to God and are unable to save ourselves from the punishment for such opposition. There is no way that we can be good enough for such salvation. However, the good news is that we don’t have to – Christ has accomplished salvation for all who repent of their sin and believe only in Him. This is what makes the gospel truly good news. It is not just advice about what sinners must do for God; rather, it is the announcement of what God has done for sinners through Jesus Christ.