What is the gospel? For one, I hope to convince you that this is the most important question to answer. I hope you will also see that what the Bible teaches about humanity and its greatest need is only answered in who Jesus is and what He did on our behalf. Finally, I hope you see that the gospel is the best news you could hear. Indeed it’s the good news you’ve always wanted and needed to hear!
We’ll look at the gospel through four points: Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Re-Creation.
Creation
The story of the gospel starts with creation. The Bible teaches from the very beginning that everything that exists came from God’s direct creation. He spoke into existence the world and the stars and the oceans and the land. He created the first people, and he created them in His own image. This means at least two things: we were made to have a relationship with Him, and we were made to act like Him.
When God created the world and His people to fill it, he also gave them rules. As He is our Creator, he is our Sovereign. He gave Adam and Eve, the first humans, one rule: don’t eat fruit from a particular tree. Why this rule? Why did He care if they ate from that particular tree? The point was to show them always that as creatures, they were subject to their Creator. God made people with the ability to reflect God’s character – but they had to always acknowledge Him as their God. They didn’t.
Fall
As Scripture records, Eve was deceived by the Serpent, and ate the forbidden fruit. Adam, who was by her side, also ate. Being perfectly Just, God was required to punish their disobedience. The broken world we live in now is a result of that first sin (any breaking of God’s rules), and the subsequent consequences. You see, God is the author of life, and being in relationship with Him is the only way to experience life the way it was truly meant to be: physical and spiritual life, living in unbroken relationship with our creator. If God allowed sin to go unpunished, we would be separated from God and we would never know the dire situation we are in. God is holy—perfect—and He cannot be in relationship with someone unholy. So when Adam and Eve sinned they lost that relationship with God, and earned death instead of life.
Redemption
Here is where the story really gets good. God loves His creation. He loves the people He made. He wants nothing less than to be in relationship with you, and with everyone that is born. He was not willing to leave the mess that Adam and Eve created. Sin however, HAD to be punished. God’s solution therefore is to take the punishment for sin on Himself! He did this by making His Son, Jesus, into a man. God became a man! He then lived the perfect life — the life Adam and Eve (and you and I) were supposed to live — and instead of getting the reward of never-ending, perfectly joyful and peaceful physical and spiritual life, He took the punishment that sinful people deserve: death and separation from the God they denied. But Jesus didn’t stay dead. Because He had not sinned, death could not keep Him, and He came back to life. And he gives us His resurrection life! He restores that relationship with God that we need, so that we don’t have to experience the alienation from God that we earned through sin.
Re-Creation
But the world is still a hot mess, isn’t it? We still are living with the consequences of sin: disease, natural disasters, death, broken families and relationships, sadness and tears, fear and anxiety: the list never ends. God promises us that our relationship with Him is restored if we trust that Jesus is the only Savior from our sin, and He also promises to fix the brokenness that comes from sin! As he first created the world which was very good He is actively working to re-create the earth free from the power and even the presence of sin! We’ll live in a world in unhindered relationship with God, the way we are intended to live.
If you’d like to know more about this, email Pastor Howarth, or come visit us for a Sunday Worship service!