What Is The Gospel?

This thought has been crossing my mind as we are still transitioning out of the beautiful message of Easter weekend. How many people go to church on Easter Sunday and don't even know what they're going for? How many people miss what it actually means that Jesus died and rose from the dead for us?

So let's talk about what the gospel is and what it really means. First, let's look at who Jesus is. We see in several places in scripture that He was both fully God and fully man. John 1:14 says "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth" (ESV) and 1 Timothy 2:5 tells us "For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus..." (ESV). So we can see that while Jesus was our example, He was also God.

Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15: 1-4 "Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures..." (ESV).

So Jesus came to earth - both fully God and man - and He fulfilled the law by dying to pay the penalty for the sins of all the world for all time. This is what we remember on Good Friday, the sacrifice that Jesus made for our sake. The following Sunday, Easter Sunday, is a big celebration because Jesus did not stay dead! He rose from the grave and defeated death, a beautiful reminder that He is coming again soon and "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4, ESV).

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Now that we have a better understanding of who Jesus is and why the gospel is so important, what do we do with it? Jesus tells His disciples in the book of Matthew to "...go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you" (Matthew 28:19-20, ESV). We go! We tell! This is news that affects every single person and is something everyone needs to know.

The older I've gotten the more I've realized (at least in my experience) that it's not that people have never heard the message of the gospel, but it's that they've never heard it correctly. I hear too often of added elements or omitted parts, completely destroying the message that God intended.

It really is simple: God loved us so much that He sent His son to earth to die and be the only sacrifice great enough to atone for our sins, so that we could spend eternity with Him in the paradise of Heaven. The battle has already been won, but it's up to us to accept that gift.