What is the Gospel?

The “gospel” literally means “good news”. It is the good news that “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).

Why is this good news? To understand why it is good news that Christ died for our sins, we first must understand the bad news: we are sinners against a holy God.

Who Is God?

God is the eternal Creator who owns all things. He existed before anything else and is the One who brought all things into existence. Everything belongs to Him, including us (Psalm 90:2, Psalm 24:1).

God is holy and perfectly righteous. He is completely pure, without any evil or corruption, and everything He does is right and just (Habakkuk 1:13, Deuteronomy 32:4).

God is the one Lawgiver and Judge. He alone has the authority to establish what is right and wrong and to judge His creatures according to His perfect standard. He is a perfect Judge who never leaves the guilty unpunished (James 4:12, Psalm 7:11, Nahum 1:2-3).

Who Are We?

We were created in His image (Genesis 1:27) to perfectly reflect His glory and live in sweet fellowship with Him forever. When God created us, He declared His creation to be “very good” (Genesis 1:31).

However, Adam and Eve, the first humans, disobeyed God. Through their rebellion, sin and death entered the world, and all of humanity was separated from the intimate fellowship with God for which we were created (Genesis 3, Romans 5:12).

Therefore all of us, descending from Adam and Eve, are born with a heart that is darkened, broken and corrupted beyond self-repair; we are spiritually dead, unable to know and respond to God as we should because of our sin (Genesis 6:5, Jeremiah 17:9, Ephesians 2:1).

In this state of deadness we are still spiritually active, but in a way that is hostile towards and separated from the true God; we are unwilling to recognise, and submit to, His authority (Ephesians 2:1-3, Romans 8:7-8, Romans 1:18-25).

This is a hopeless state from which we are unable to free ourselves; we are slaves of sin. We are so lost, we are not only unable to find our way, we actively resist the true way (John 8:34, Romans 3:10-12, John 3:19-20).

Even when we do things that are outwardly good for others, our deeds are still stained by sin, as they are not done with perfectly pure hearts and motives, wholly out of love for God and a desire to glorify Him. These are considered filthy in the sight of God who is the standard and benchmark of moral purity (Isaiah 64:6).

Just as a rotten apple cannot become wholesome and of use by itself, so too are we unable to reverse our state of rottenness by ourselves.

We have all sinned, broken God’s law, and stand guilty before our holy, righteous, eternal God (Romans 3:23, James 2:10).

Even those of us who have never read the Bible have done things we know are wrong e.g. lying, stealing, cheating, acting selfishly, disobeying parents, and more (Romans 2:14-15).