What is the Gospel?

The Bible is God’s Word and it explains who you are, where you came from, what went wrong, and who can set all things right. It all started so well when God created everything that exists in Genesis 1 and 2. When God had finished each day of His creation as recorded in Genesis 1, He looked and saw that “It was good”. And on the sixth and final day of creation, as He formed and fashioned human beings, the only ones made in His own image, His assessment of all that He had done was that everything was, “Very good” (Genesis 1:31). Perfect human beings were created in the image of God, in a perfect environment, and in a perfect relationship with their Creator and God. That right relationship between man and God is one where we recognize that He is God and we are not. He is creator and therefore He owns everything. Psalm 24:1-2 says “

“The earth is the Lord’s and all that it contains

The world, and those who dwell in it.”

God has every right to expect worship from man. Man, including you, was created to rightly worship and glorify God. The God of the Bible is one who is Holy (totally unique and set apart from His creation), and perfectly righteous in His being.

The perfect relationship in the garden did not last though. In this perfect environment, there was only one prohibition, one forbidden thing: the eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Disobedience was serious. Death was the penalty (Genesis 2:16, 17). Adam and Eve needed to show their love for and submission to God, by obeying His word. They failed. The sad events of Genesis 3 record the fall of the human race, from perfect harmony with God in the perfect place of His blessing to open rebellion toward God in a place cursed by their own sin. God proclaims in vv. 14-19 His judgment upon sin. Sin brought forth death and all that is wrong in this world (Rom. 5:12). This sin affects everyone. Psalm 51:5 reads,

“Behold I was brought forth in iniquity,

And in sin my mother conceived me”

Everyone, including you, is born sinful, helplessly separated from God. We suffer the effects of this sin that include death, pain, sorrow, sickness and everything else that is wrong with this world. However, contained within these terrifying words of judgment in Genesis 3 is a promise of something wonderful. In Genesis 3:15, the promise is given of One who is the seed of the woman, whose heel would be bruised by the serpent, but who would crush the head of the enemy of God.  The gospel, or good news, was preached first in the Garden by the Creator, the promise of a deliverer from sin.

The God of the Bible is not only Holy and perfectly righteous but is also Just. He hates sin. Would a good judge in the world we know let a crime go unpunished because he wants to show love? No, we would all cry foul. While God is love, he is also perfectly Just. The judgement pronounced for sin was death, and so the pages of the Old Testament record the history of the expansion of death and sin in the world. But within this history, a thread runs from the words of Genesis 3:15. God is at work preparing for the Seed of the woman to come and set things right. He chooses a man from whom this seed will come, that man is Abraham Genesis 12:1-3, and then from that man a nation, Israel through whom the seed, the Messiah was going to come. He gave this nation the Law, to show people over and over again that they were sinners, in need of forgiveness. No one could ever keep God’s commands perfectly. You can’t either, no matter how good you think you are. The Bible says in Rom. 3:23,

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

God also gave Israel Priests to stand as mediators between God and man, pointing to their need of the Mediator, Christ, who would be need to set things right. He commanded them to sacrifice animals to die as substitutes for the sins of God’s people pointing to their need of the One perfect sacrifice that was needed to die once and for all for the sins of the world (Rom. 6:10). He gave the Tabernacle and Temple, to remind the people that God desired to live with them but, because of their sin, they could not approach Him.

Throughout the Old Testament, the thread of the Serpent-crusher, the Saviour runs, and then a voice cries in the wilderness to announce, “He has come” (Matthew 3). Jesus is born of a virgin woman, conceived by the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:18-24). Being fully and eternally God, Jesus entered our world to become, at the same time, fully Man (John 1:14) so that He could do two things: obey for us and satisfy God’s justice on our behalf by dying for us. Born a perfect Man, He lived a perfect life. Sin’s penalty was death, and since He committed no sin, He did not have to die. However, He was the end of the thread. He had to have His heel bitten by the Serpent as prophesied in Genesis 3:15 (a picture of his death on the cross). He had to be the Lamb of God, sacrificed upon the altar of God’s infinite justice in order to take away the sin of the world (John 1:29). The promise made by the Father in the Garden (Genesis 3:15) leads eventually to a barren hilltop outside Jerusalem where, on behalf of all those who would believe, the sacrificial Lamb is offered (Hebrews 10:10). The Shepherd dies so that the sheep may live (John 10:11).

Who would have thought that when the Father promised the Serpent-crusher to come, that He Himself would crush His own Son so that the Serpent’s head would be crushed (Isaiah 53:10) and in that twofold crushing, we would receive forgiveness. The Father “made Him sin, who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). In that act of sacrifice, the door back to fellowship with the Father is opened. To show that God accepted this substitutionary death of Jesus on the cross for our sin to satisfy His wrath, God raised Jesus from the dead. If there was no resurrection, our faith in the gospel would be worthless and christians are to be most pitied (1 Cor. 15). Through Jesus, sinful humans could be forgiven and enter with boldness into the very throne room of God’s grace (Hebrews 4:16).

Here is the good news from God. The Serpent has been crushed through the offered-up life of the Son of God, the power of sin has been defeated.

That thread that began in the Garden continues to run, as God works the history of the world in conformity with the counsel of His own will (Ephesians 1:11), towards the day when everything will be perfectly ordered and structured around His Son (Ephesians 1:10). And the story that began with a wedding in the Garden that was spoiled by sin, ends with a wedding in a city that is entirely fee from sin (Revelation 19, 21 and 22). And once again the world is made perfect, even better than “very good” (Revelation 21:1), and the dwelling of God is once again with man (Revelation 21:1-4).       

So how does one have a right relationship with God again? The Bible says what God has done through Christ is grace. Grace means getting something you have not earned or deserve. You need to acknowledge to God that you indeed are a sinner separated from Him in need of His grace. Confess to Him your sins and that He is Lord. The Bible says in Romans 10: 9-10,

that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.

Through His grace, God also calls you to have faith in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That in all these things He was the perfect substitute for you from God. Remember you needed to obey perfectly and He did that for you. You needed to die, for the penalty of sin is death. Christ was the perfect sacrifice for your sin. He rose from the dead showing that God was pleased and accepted this perfect sacrifice. This is such grace from God. Ephesians 2:8-9 says,

For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.

You cannot work for this salvation. It is the work of God. God also calls you to believe in this good news of the gospel and repent from your sins. The gospel produces and demands a changed life in daily putting aside the things of the flesh and putting in the things of that please God. It demands dying daily to sin. That means you leave the old sinful ways you were living and start following God.

If you would like more information or clarity on being saved or understanding the gospel more please do not hesitate to get in touch with us.