WHAT IS THE GOSPEL

WHAT IS THE GOSPEL?

The introduction of this book states that the church of God is the only institution entrusted by God with the message of repentance of sins and belief in Jesus Christ for forgiveness. This single task ultimately displays His glory to His creation. This solitary message is what is known as the gospel – euangelion – the good news or as the Old English says, “Glad tidings.”
The gospel is what grows the church in both the vertical (spiritual) and horizontal (numerical) realm. It does so by protecting the assembly from doctrinal error and moral wickedness. The church must be faithful to this gospel message and trust that Christ will build His church by this very method that He has set forth before us. We, as a church, do not measure success by the count on our membership role but by our faithfulness to remain steadfast to the whole of scripture.
So what is the gospel? The authors of this book have outlined the gospel as:

God is our holy Creator and righteous Judge. He created us to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever, but we have all sinned, both in Adam as our representative head, and in our own individual actions. Rom. 5:12 Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned. Rom. 3:23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, We therefore deserve death – spiritual separation from God in hell. Rom. 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Eph. 2:3 Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. We, in fact, are spiritually stillborn, helpless in our sins. Ps. 51:5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me. Rom. 5:6-8 For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7. For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. 8. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Eph. 2:1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins. We are in need of God to impart spiritual life to us. John 3:3 Jesus answered and said to him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." So God sent His Son Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man, to die the death that we deserved, and He raised Him up for our justification, proving that He was God’s Son. Rom. 5:1 Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Rom. 1:4 declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord. If we would have Christ’s perfect righteousness credited to us, and the penalty for out sins accounted to Him, we must repent of our sins and believe in Jesus Christ for salvation. 2Cor. 5:21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

The Old Testament showed us the Law and how helpless that we were in our own efforts to keep it; this is not good news. The New Testament contains this good news that even though we are all sinners we have Jesus Christ as our substitute. He alone paid our sin debt in full making us alive to righteousness and an access to God’s peace. He is Jacob’s ladder.