What is the Gospel?

What is the Good News?

To fully understand what the Good News is, we first have to recognize and acknowledge that we have a problem - It's called the human sin condition that all humanity faces. 

​

What is sin? 

Timothy Keller explains it this way,

"Sin is not merely breaking rules, but is a fundamental, idolatrous heart-turn away from God to center life on oneself."  Sin is  "worship disorder" where good things become "ultimate things", acting as a self-destructive, enslaving power that wrecks human faculties. 

​​Sin means to miss a target or fall short of a standard. When we sin we are failing to live up to God’s standard of holiness by breaking His law, or willfully choosing to disregard His law and will for all. Sin is what separates us from God.

Where did sin come from?

There was a time when there was no sin.  If you go back to the beginning of time, in Genesis 1:27 we read that “God created man in His own image," and we read that "God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good." Genesis 1:31  This implies Adam was created with no sin and was righteousness and free of sin.  

However, when Adam gave into temptation in the garden, Adam became a sinner - likewise the curse came upon all humanity. This sin separates us from God.

Romans 5:12, “When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned.”   His sin became our inherited “spiritual” gene trait that was passed on to each generation…no one escapes it.

Romans 3:23, “For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard." 

So now what? That's all really bad news.

​

What is the Good News?

Adam's rebellion did not throw God off, He already knew humans would rebel, and because of God’s pure love, He already had a plan to reconcile us back to Himself through His son, Jesus Christ.  Because God is the only one who is capable of forgiving sin - there needs to be payment for our sin - and we humans are unfit and unable to pay what we owe God. 

"But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come He might show the boundless riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God."  Ephesians 2:4-8

God became man - in the person of Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried and on the third day He rose again from the dead, and ascended into heaven.

This is the Good News!

By placing your trust in Jesus Christ, you can receive forgiveness of sins and have restored fellowship with God (John 3:16; Ephesians 2:8–9). This relationship provides eternal life as well as an abundant life through our connection with the Lord (John 10:10).

Jesus conquered sin and death and provided a way back to God and to be adopted into the family of God.