Let's Start at the Very Beginning...What is the Gospel?

 Nowadays we hear people talk about the gospel in a variety of ways. If you look at social media, you can see all kinds of different explanations for the gospel, what it is, and what it means. Family, friends, news articles, tv, books, etc. can all have different ways of talking about it. This can lead to so much confusion! What is the gospel really? How do we understand it from a historical Christian perspective?

Put simply, the word gospel means “good news.” But why do we care if there’s good news? Because there’s bad news. Because of our own sin, we are separated from God. We have rebelled against his design and are hopelessly lost without Him. But it wasn’t always like this…

Let’s start at the very beginning

Creation

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). The first miracle. What a beautiful display of God’s power! God shows His love for mankind in this story. He first created day and night, the sky, the earth, plants, and animals before He created man- he spent the first five days creating what we would need to survive. Not only that, he created man in his own image (Genesis 1:27). This is a totally unique characteristic of mankind! The rest of creation may reflect God’s power, but it does not reflect God’s image. To put it very simply, man has the potential to understand goodness and beauty-animals do not.

In those days, Adam and Eve had closeness with God. They had everything they needed and they didn’t know sin.

But then…

The Fall

Adam: “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” (Genesis 3:12)

Eve: “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” (Genesis 3:13b)

They had everything they needed, but they took what they wanted instead. They abandoned closeness with God in a futile attempt to achieve equality with him.

“And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.’” (Genesis 2:16-17)

It’s tempting to blame this whole thing on the devil or another person, as Adam and Eve do. But they both knew the truth; the serpent didn’t outright lie to Eve. He presented desirable half-truths to tempt her into believing God was holding out on her. Eve added false information that was not part of God’s command: she said, “…but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” (Genesis 3:3). Then Adam ate too. This first open act of rebellion against God brought devastating, deadly consequences for the rest of mankind.

“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).

We are all sinners by birth, choice, practice, and generational influence. We have all rebelled against God’s authority and attempted to achieve equality with him. Our sin has caused separation between us and a perfectly holy God.

Here’s the good news…

Redemption

In Genesis 3:15 God says to the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

God already had a plan, one he fulfilled through his son Jesus. We owed a debt we couldn’t pay-Jesus came to earth as a man to pay the debt for us. He was conceived by the holy spirit and born of a virgin. He lived a perfectly sinless life yet was brutally murdered by the very people he came to save. On the third day, he was resurrected-defeating the power of death and the devil.

You may have heard John 3:16 since you were a small child: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

Why is this verse so ubiquitous? Because this is the gospel! We were sentenced to death, but Jesus stood in our place. Not only that, he conquered death through his resurrection! All we have to do is believe in him. As Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” I can’t think of better news. We no longer have to be eternally separated from God!

 

But this isn’t the end of the story. And we’ll get to that.