What Is the Gospel of Jesus Christ?

This is the most important question that could ever be asked, and the most important question that could ever be answered.

I believe God has placed a burden upon my heart to make believers aware of what the gospel is. I’m afraid and concerned that many professing Christians, and genuine Christians alike, are ignorant of the gospel. If you ask many professing Christians even at what point they were converted, let alone what the message of the gospel is, they would not be able to give an articulate answer. They would not be able to give you a definitive answer.

My fellow believer in Jesus Christ, my fellow brother or sister, I want to encourage you today not to develop the attitude, which is the custom of some, that the gospel is boring. That the gospel is something we just need to deal with for five minutes when we become born again, and then we can move on to other things.

The gospel is the central message of Christianity. It is utterly important that we are able to understand the gospel and to be able to articulate the gospel. The word of God does talk about the simplicity of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and I want to articulate that today. But I also want to encourage believers of the utter importance of being able to know the gospel by which you are saved.

We see from the word of God in Galatians 1 that Paul warned the believers in the church of Galatia that if anybody comes to them preaching another gospel, even contorts the gospel, twists the gospel, that that person should be accursed. We also get understanding from the Book of Acts Chapter 15 that those who are preaching a false gospel were not outright telling people to follow a different Messiah, that is not a true Messiah. They were not telling people to go out and commit blatant debauchery, go out and commit gross immorality, and that is okay to do as a Christian. All they were doing was adding one requirement to the gospel – just be circumcised, and then you can be saved.

I hope that example from scripture, from the word of God, clearly illustrates the importance of understanding and preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is what I want to declare to you today, that God has revealed Himself as the one true God, the Maker of heaven and earth. The one who reigns supremely over all things has clearly revealed Himself. It is clearly an evident fact from viewing creation from the word of God and looking at the influence and transformation that the Lord Jesus Christ brings to individuals and this world altogether, that it is a false idea that God is some distant God, that He just created creation and left creation to be by itself.

It is also a false worldview that God is some unknowable God, that God is this abstract higher power, that is a force that cannot be personally known. The word of God clearly communicates to us in Romans 2:14-15: “For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another.”

Scripture also teaches us in Psalm 19:1-2: “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth His handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.”

The word of God is communicating to us that all of creation and our own conscience bear witness that we have broken God’s law. That we have done things that go against our own nature, and we have committed what the Bible talks about sin and transgression. We’ve all transgressed against God’s law, and why is this important?

Well, a lot of this can be brought back to the nature of God, who God is. You see, God is a just God, God is a thrice-holy God, God is a good God. God communicates this about Himself in the book of Isaiah 46:5: “To whom will you liken me and make me equal and compare me that we should be alike?” God goes on to declare about Himself that He is God and there is no other, that He is God and there is none like Him. There is nothing inside of creation, visible or invisible, that God can be compared with.

God is on a completely different level; His nature, His character, His attributes are not to be compared with created beings, are not to be compared with inside of things, inside of creation. Actually, because God is so just and so holy, this essentially puts Him in a dilemma; what does He do with fallen humanity, who has rebelled against Him, who has committed crimes against Him and His kingdom, and against other human beings, when He is a holy and just God?

If God is a holy and just God, God is going to punish, God is going to give a negative consequence towards sin. Yet at the same time, in scripture we see that God is a loving father, we see that He delights in mercy. And that judgment is His strange work, it’s not something that He desires. The word of God tells us that God is willing that none should perish but that all should come to repentance.

I hope you can see what I’m trying to illustrate is this dilemma. God is a holy and just God, and if He is going to act as a just judge, He would send us to hell because we have committed crimes against Him and we are deserving of eternal separation from Him. The word of God says the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ.

So, how does our Lord Jesus Christ bring about this gift of Life? The Lord Jesus Christ is the solution to this dilemma between God and man. Now, what human beings will naturally revert to when faced with the fact that they have transgressed God’s law and that they are guilty in the sight of God, is essentially the good things that they have done. As it is written, there is no one righteous, no not one, there is none who understands, there is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside, they have together become unprofitable. There is none who does good, no not one.

Now, something amazing and important to understand about the gospel of Jesus Christ is that the gospel of Jesus Christ calls us to abandon our trust, abandon our faith, in our good deeds. Even the greatest of good deeds in this life, done in the flesh, are ultimately for yourself. They are ultimately for our own glory, our own interests, our own self-desires, and these things need to be abandoned as the reason of why we should try to be right with God.

This is the distinct thing that makes following Jesus Christ, being a believer in Jesus Christ, different from all other world religions. You see, it is important to understand that the gospel of Jesus Christ is not about what we can do for God, but rather it is the opposite of this, it is about what God has done for us in Christ Jesus.

Are we willing to humbly by faith in Christ alone and receive the gift of God, which is eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ? Because we are hopeless in that of ourselves to reconcile ourselves to God. Scripture actually communicates that we are alienated from God by wicked works. That we’ve become enemies of God by making ourselves a friend of this world, and that we are dead in sins and trespasses.

You see, when you have committed sin, it brings about spiritual death, you are spiritually dead, and you cannot reconcile yourself to God. You need the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the word of God tells us in the book of Isaiah that the triune God is the only Saviour, there is none besides Him, He is the only Saviour.

The good news of the gospel is this: that before the foundation of the world, the first person of the Godhead, the Father, purposed to send His Son Jesus Christ, the second person of the Godhead, to redeem fallen humanity, to redeem broken sinners to be reconciled unto Himself. John 1:14 says: ”The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory, the glory as the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth.”

So the word of God says the Lord Jesus Christ, being both fully God and being fully human, came to redeem a people, came as Messiah to redeem this world. The word of God says in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” So Jesus Christ went and died a torturous death on the cross. He drank the cup of suffering and paid our ransom on the cross that we can be reconciled to God, that our sins can be forgiven.

And because Jesus Christ lived a sinless life and perfectly obeyed God’s law, we can receive His righteousness before God. We can stand clothed in the very righteousness of Jesus Christ Himself. You know, without the cross of Jesus Christ, our sins could not be forgiven as much as God would want to forgive us, as much as God would desire to forgive us.

There needed to be a substitute for the punishment that we deserve. Romans 3:20-26 says: “Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; To declare, I say, at this time His righteousness: that He might be just, and the justifier of Him which believeth in Jesus.”

When Jesus Christ bore our sins in His body on the cross, it justified God to have mercy upon our sins because – remember God is a holy God – God is completely opposite from sin. God is completely opposite from those who live in sin, the wicked. If God were to just outright join Himself with the wicked and let the wicked go free, it would demote God’s holiness. God could be looked at as not just.

Jesus Christ had to come in the place of us and to suffer that death upon the cross, and He died upon that cross, and He was buried, and on the third day He rose again. And afterwards He was seen of many witnesses, and He ascended up into heaven and He’s sitting now at the right hand of God until all the enemies of God be put under His feet.

God is now calling a people, God is redeeming people out of every tribe, tongue, and nation of this world that they would believe on the gospel of Jesus Christ, and that they might be reconciled to God and enter the kingdom of God.

Scripture tells us this in 1 Corinthians 15:1-4: “Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand;  By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the scriptures:”

Now, what the word of God tells us to do at the beginning of Jesus Christ’s ministry is to repent and believe the gospel of Jesus Christ. To repent, stop going your own way, forsake your sin, and put your faith solely in the Lord Jesus Christ.

If you do not have this blessed assurance that you’ve been born again of the spirit of God, if you do not have this blessed assurance that your sins have been forgiven, I want to call you today to repent and believe the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Turn from your sin and put your faith solely in what the Lord Jesus Christ has accomplished for you on the cross, and when you do so, the third person of the godhead will come and dwell inside of you. You will be the temple of God, you will have the Holy Spirit, be born again and be adopted into the family of God, and have eternal life with the Lord Jesus Christ forever.

And when you pass on from this life, you’ll be in the kingdom of God forever with all the saints of God, to worship God throughout the whole of eternity, to have fellowship with Him, to walk with Him, to have communion with Him. And that starts now, the moment that you repent and believe the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So would you put your faith solely in the Lord Jesus Christ?

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The above is a transcript of Noah Hine’s video: “What is the Gospel of Jesus Christ?”

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Part 1 of a 16 part video series “No Other Gospel”

Disclaimer: Inclusion on this site does not necessarily imply agreement with or endorsement of anything said by that individual or organisation here or elsewhere, or any links therein. Some information could be doctrinally unsound.  Pray for guidance and discernment and test everything against the word of God. “Beloved, believe not every spirit but try the spirits whether they are of God, as many false prophets are gone out into the world.” (1John 4:1) “They searched the scriptures daily whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)

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