The Gospel
In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
1 John 4:10
I am accepted by God, not on the basis of my personal performance, but on the basis of the infinitely perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ.
​
John Owen
The best news of the Christian gospel is that the supremely glorious Creator of the universe has acted in Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection to remove every obstacle between us and Himself so that we may find everlasting joy in seeing and savoring His infinite beauty.
―John Piper
The gospel is the love story between God and mankind.
​
The gospel is all we need to answer every question, from who we are (creations of a glorious Creator), to where we are headed (a new and restored creation, free from sin and death), and how to live our lives in the meantime (love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself).
Without the gospel, we are fumbling in the dark trying to grasp at anything for security, meaning, purpose, and.... our true identity.
​
The gospel is the good news that that what separates us from God, sin, has been defeated on the cross.
The gospel reveals to us that disobeying God('s Word) is what led to separation (spiritual death) and enmity with God, and the gospel is literally the Word of God that, when believed, undoes the consequences of this fall and separation. By believing in the gospel, God's Word to us, we put our faith (trust) in Him alone, and relationship with God is restored as we are (re)created in His image.
​
The simplicity of the gospel gives what the complexity of human wisdom promises but never delivers.
― John MacArthur
Jesus, being God, came from outside of time, from heaven, entered time and space and human flesh, but as the first human ever, did not sin (was completely obedient to God the Father), so that when He died, He could die for our sins and not His own, and He could be raised from the dead, because death had no claim on Him. The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23) so He literally paid the penalty that we deserved, and through faith (believing God has done this for us), Christ’s sacrifice is appropriated to us, an eye for an eye - but rather than getting what we deserve (eternal separation from God) we receive what we do *not* deserve; forgiveness & eternity with God (heaven).
This is called grace, amazing grace!
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 6:23
God is eternal, existing from everlasting to everlasting, there is none like Him.
​
“You are my witnesses,” declares the Lord, “and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me and understand that I am He. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me.
Isaiah 43:10
​
Out of nothing, He created everything!
The galaxies, the stars, every atom, the natural laws, animals plants, angels (spirit beings) and humans.
​
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Genesis 1:1
​
Human beings alone were created in the image of God; to have a special relationship with God.
​
So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
Genesis 1:27
​
We were given the choice to trust God, symbolized by eating from the tree of life, or to disobey God, to trust in ourselves instead, symbolized by eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which represents wanting to be like God ourselves, deciding for ourselves what is right and what is wrong.
​
But the LORD God warned him, “You may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden - except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat its fruit, you are sure to die.”
Genesis 2:16-17
​
Did God really say?
We choose to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This one decision split us of from (fellowship with) God.
It was the serpent (devil) who tempted us to do so, but it was our own hearts wanting to share in power and sovereignty and glory, that made us eat the forbidden fruit.
​
Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
Genesis 3:1
​
For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
Gensis 3:5
Just as Satan (the devil), formerly known as Lucifer, the most beautiful of all angels, wanted to be 'free' from God's authority, rather than obey, worship and exalt a Holy God - so did we.
​
You said in your heart, “I will ascend to the heavens; I will raise my throne above the stars of God.
Isaiah 14:13
​
Since God is light and in Him there is no darkness, turning our backs on God to follow our own way and our own desires, we cut ourselves off from the God who IS (the source of all) light and life, resulting in spiritual death (separation from God).
​
This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in Him at all.
1 John 1:5
​
But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear.
Isaiah 59:2
Sin affects all of creation, creation falling under a curse affecting everything and everyone; from pure perfection of heaven (God's presence) overlapping with earth (God's glory), to disease, decay, and death entering the world (natural disasters aren't natural - they are a sign of chaos and that something has gone utterly wrong)
​
All creation groans
Romans 8:22
​
Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse.
Romans 8:20
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned
Romans 5:12
​
Being separated from God, mankind now lives in spiritual darkness; His heart forever missing his true home, and descending in moral chaos from doing what is right in his own eyes.
​
All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to
follow our own.
Isaiah 53:6
Our entire history is one big testimony to mankind being lost and depraved without God.
​
The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The LORD grieved that He had made man on the earth, and His heart was filled with pain.
Genesis 6:5
But God, in His all-knowing, all foreseeing, understood this would happen when giving his creatures free will, and instituted a failsafe; He would come to rescue us from the power of evil, sin, and death, and overthrow the kingdom of darkness and the devil!
​
God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself
2 Corinthians 5:19
But now has been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel
2 Timothy 1:10
​
He would come as a human, and He would live the perfect, sinless life we couldn't, and would bear the consequence of our sin, the penalty of our transgression.
​
God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.
2 Corinthians 5:21
He bore our sins on the cross, died the death and experienced the full separation from God's love (hell) that we deserved, and because death had no claim on Him (being sinless), God raised Him on the third day to overcome the power of death.
​
For Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the sake of the unrighteous, that He might lead you to God.
1 Peter 3:18
Now all who believe God, by believing in Jesus, the One He send, it will be counted to them as righteousness; Jesus's perfection will be counted to us, and our sins are forgiven. It is this act of faith that restores the relationship between us and God.
​
Jesus told them, “This is the only work God wants from you: Believe in the one he has sent.”
John 6:29
​
There is no judgment against anyone who believes in Him. But anyone who does not believe in Him has already been judged for not believing in God’s one and only Son.
John 3:18
In that moment we believe, we receive the Holy Spirit; God breathes His Spirit in us once again, we pass from (spiritual) death to life, and the veil separating the Holy God from us sinful man, will be torn and removed. We now have 'eyes to see and ears to hear', and we will see God for the first time; albeit dimly and partly now; and fully and completely only in the future heavens and earth.
​
Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
John 3:#
​
Then their eyes were opened and they recognized Him,
Luke 24:31
​
Now we see a dim reflection, as if we were looking into a mirror, but then we shall see clearly. Now I know only a part, but then I will know fully, as God has known me.
1 Corinthians 13:12
The Holy Spirit is also a deposit; guaranteeing our inheritance of heaven, of being reunited with God forever once the new heavens and earth will be created.
​
and he has identified us as his own by placing the Holy Spirit in our hearts as the first installment that guarantees everything he has promised us.
2 Corinthians 1:22
Jesus will return, this time not to offer Himself as a sacrifice for sins, but to judge those who have chosen to continue in their sin and rebellion against God.
​
So Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.
Hebrews 9:28
​
Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay each one for what he has done.
Revelation 22:12
​
God will not let His creation be tarnished with sin, evil, and death forever. We are living in the 'last days', the period between Jesus' first and second coming. There will come a time, where there will be no more time to return to God and be restored into His image, to be made compatible with the perfection of the new creation. This creation will be cleansed of all unrighteousness, and those perpetuating chaos by going their own way rather than god's way.
See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.
Isaiah 65:17
​
And there shall be no more curse
Revelation 22:3
​
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.
Revelation 21:4
The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven; it is a way to get people to God.
​
- John Piper
The Gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever
dared hope.
- Tim Keller
We are too much haunted by ourselves, projecting the central shadow of self on everything around us. And then comes the Gospel to rescue us from this selfishness. Redemption is this, to forget self in God.
- Frederick W. Robertson
By the light of nature we see God as a God above us, by the light of the law we see Him as a God against us, but by the light of the gospel we see Him as Emmanuel, God with us.
- Matthew Henry
We want to be saved from our misery, but not from our sin. We want to sin without misery, just as the prodigal son wanted inheritance without the father. The foremost spiritual law of the physical universe is that this hope can never be realized. Sin always accompanies misery. There is no victimless crime, and all creation is subject to decay because of humanity’s rebellion from God.
― R.C. Sproul
The resurrection declared that Jesus was not the ordinary sort of political king, a rebel leader, that some had supposed. He was the leader of a far larger, more radical revolution than anyone had ever supposed. He was inaugurating a whole new world, a new creation, a new way of being human. He was forging a way into a new cosmos, a new era, a form of existence hinted at all along but never before unveiled. Here it is, he was saying. This is the new creation you’ve been waiting for. It is open for business. Come and join in.
― N.T. Wright