The Gospel

The Gospel

         The gospel. The good news. The truth that the Lord of Lords gave to us to be counted upon as a steady foundation for all people everywhere. 

         This good news starts at the beginning. In the beginning, God created everything and it was perfect. The Lord in himself is good and perfect and he created a perfect world without sin and death. Being the good God, he is, he gave us humans free will to choose how we live. Humans, however, became selfish and prideful in our own ways and sinned against God by thinking of ourselves as smart and more powerful than He. 

Because of this sin and because of God’s holiness, he was forced to banish us from his presence. The perfect world God had created became imperfect and broken because of the sin we humans brought upon it. Now there is pain, toil, grief, and death because of the sin humans committed by following their own selfish desires. Now, we humans are slaves to sin because we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. 

         However, God, in His omnipotence, knew this would happen and still had immense love for his people. Because of his love, he set into action his plan of reconciling the world back to himself and getting rid of sin forever. God chose a man of the good character named Abraham to bless with descendants so that through his descendants all the world would be blessed. From Abraham came the nation of Israel which God chose to prepare the way for the coming Messiah, who will soon defeat death and reconcile all who believe in him, back to God. God made Israel quite aware of the need for him by all of the imperfect downfalls of human leadership, authority, and earthly sacrifices. Judges were given to Israel to save them from calamity, but all the judges fall short of perfection. Kings were given to Israel to lead them but all of them fell short. Prophets were given to Israel to give them a revelation of what the Lord would say but all these prophets fell short. Sacrifice was given to Israel as a way to be made temporarily clean in the image of God, but these sacrifices would never be enough. All these things displayed the sinful nature of man and the holiness of God. God, rich in his knowledge and his mercy, sent his own son whom he loves greatly to be the perfect prophet, the perfect judge, the perfect king, and the perfect sacrifice. His son is the Messiah and the Messiah is Jesus Christ.

         God sent his son Jesus, into the world through a virgin named Mary. Jesus lived a sinless and blameless life which qualified him to be the perfect king, prophet, judge, and sacrifice contrary to all the kings, prophets, and judges we see in the Old Testament. Humans by nature deserve death and punishment because of our sin, but Jesus, rich in his love and his mercy bore our shame, our sin, our punishment, and died the death we deserved on a cross so that all who believe in him may be forgiven of their sin. Jesus lived a sinless life but died a sinner’s death in our place and was buried in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead on the third day because death could not contain the love that he has for us. Jesus came down to earth, defeated death, gave us a promise of his return, then ascended back into heaven. 

         Jesus will return and this time he will judge the earth so that the world may finally be reconciled back to its creator. The good news of the gospel is that God in his patience and his mercy provided a way for us to escape judgment from our sins through the washing in the blood of Jesus. For it is by grace, through faith that all can be saved from the wraith to come. God will bring to completion his plan of reconciliation and redemption on the earth, and he chooses to let us take part in his death so that we may also take part in his life. 

         So, this is the good news of the gospel: All though we were dead in our sin, God sent his son Jesus to die in our place so that we may be forgiven, freed from our sin, and reconciled to the excellent, amazing, and wonderful Lord of Hosts.