Transcription
So, what is the gospel? Well, this is actually a pretty simple question. I mean, even kids can understand what the gospel is. The term means good news, but that, of course, begs the question, well, what's the good news? What's all that about?
You have to understand a little bit about the biblical story. The way I like to get into this is just to ask a simple question: What does God want? I actually wrote a little book about this. In a nutshell, what God wants is a family. God wants a human family. This is why we are created. We were created because God wanted us to be with him. He made beings like himself so that he could have conversations. He could commune with them. He could have relationships and friendships with them. He couldn't do that with the rest of creation.
That all gets ruined at the fall in the biblical story. But God doesn't give up on the original plan. He still wants a human family. He wants you. It's actually a pretty simple question, of course, but, you know, we stumble over it because we want to feel like we're earning that place at God's table or under God's roof, like we've earned or done something sufficient, you know, for God to welcome us into his family. But that is not what the gospel says.
What we have to realize right now is that we are post-Eden in a condition, in a fallen world where there is a lot of sin, including in our own hearts. We are sinners because we are imperfect. We cannot possibly work our way to the level of holiness that God's presence demands. We were originally created for that, but that ended pretty soon in the biblical story, in Eden, in the fall. So, we're now in a situation where we are separated from God because we are sinners. And we all know this. The real question is, well, what do we do about it?
The short answer is we don't do anything about it except believe what God has done about it. And that's the story of Jesus. God became a man in Jesus of Nazareth. He died on a cross. He rose again. Why did he do all that? It was so that the penalty for our sin could be paid. I mean, we we know famous verses like John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him would have eternal life." God gave his son. This was a voluntary thing that Jesus did. The son, the eternal son, the part of the Trinity, becomes a man in Jesus. This is all voluntary for you to give his life, his human life as a payment for sin to bring us back to God, to reconcile us back to him.
This is what we need to believe. This is the gospel. Another way of saying this is the gospel is not about performance. You know, scripture also says that for by grace, again, grace is unmerited favor, God's disposition to love us. "By grace we are saved through faith and not of ourselves, not of works, lest anyone would be able to boast about that." To claim that God owed them eternal life, that God, you know, had to give it to us, that we put God in our debt because of our performance, because we were so good. Salvation has nothing to do with being good enough to make God happy. Okay, Romans 5:8 says it best that God loved us. Christ loved us while we were yet sinners. Okay, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. It has nothing to do with our performance, our works. We never put God in our debt.
So, what God wants is for you to believe that you can't earn salvation. To believe that the only way of salvation is through what Jesus did on the cross and to put your exclusive faith in that. This is the method God has provided for salvation. Frankly, it's what makes the gospel different than all other religions. All other religions either deny that humans have a sin problem or the solution for the sin problem is performance. Some ritual or set of rituals or obey a checklist, do this or that. The gospel is unique. God understands that we can do nothing to be acceptable in his presence. All he wants from us is for us to believe what he did through Jesus on our behalf.
So, this is the gospel. This is how to have eternal life. All you need to do is have that conversation with God where you tell him again that you're sorry for your sin. You know you're a sinner. You acknowledge what you are. And we all know this. You acknowledge what you are and you tell God that you believe in what Jesus did on the cross for you. You accept that exclusively as the method for salvation. Jesus said it pretty well himself. He says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." That's John 14:6. This is what you need to tell God that you believe and you accept and you embrace, that you want to be a follower of Jesus and believe in what he did for you on the cross. That is the gospel, and we hope that you will do that and believe.