Theology Basics: What Is The Gospel?

For someone new to the Christian faith, the most important thing for them to understand is a simple one: the gospel.

That was an understatement. The most important question for anyone to understand the answer to is the question of what the gospel is. I would even go so far as to say that an accurate understanding of the gospel is a prerequisite to the Christian faith. To understand and accept the gospel is to enter into the Christian faith.

Gospel is a word that is thrown around a lot in Christian circles, but what does it mean? Are we talking about the 4 books in the Bible that describe the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus? Are we talking about a genre of southern folk music? Does every church have the same version of the gospel? What do people mean when they talk about a social gospel or a prosperity gospel? Why is Paul so intense about any gospel other than the gospel of Christ? (Galatians 1:6-9)

In order to understand the gospel, first we must understand the fundamental worldview behind the Christian faith – which is based on the clear witness of the Bible itself.

The Problem of Sin

The fundamental premise of the Christian worldview is that God has created everything in the universe ex nihilo (from nothing, which has been confirmed by modern science), and that everything was perfect when he created it. According to the witness of Scripture, after God created his good world, Satan deceived the first humans and convinced them to sin by breaking the rule that God had given them.

Far more than simply choosing to pick and eat an apple, the sin committed by Adam and Eve was effectively the decision to reject God’s authority and to instead set themselves up in God’s place, determining right and wrong.

This rebellion introduced sin into God’s creation, and caused all of humankind to be born in a state of spiritual death. Because of sin, we are naturally inhibited from being able to have a relationship with God.

What the doctrine of original sin means is that we are born in a state of enmity from God, unable to have a right relationship with him because of our sin. This is the premise behind the Christian faith. Scripture is clear that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).

Before moving on, it is important to recognize that this understanding of humanity is fundamentally different than the spirit of our own age. The current prevailing worldview is what I will call a humanist worldview. On this view, we’re told that people are inherently good, and that most people average out to be good people (that is, they do more good than bad). We are told that we are the most important thing in our life, and that our heart will never lead us astray.

The biblical worldview, on the other hand, destroys any illusion we have of our own inherent goodness or righteousness. Scripture tells us that the heart is desperately sick and deceitful above all things (Jeremiah 17:9). No one truly does good, and all are corrupt (Psalm 14:1-3). We know what the right thing is, but so often we fail to do it (Romans 7:15-20). This is a hard truth to come to grips with, but an honest look inward tells us it is true.

We can pretend that we’re good and that we’re righteous, and we can surround ourselves with distractions that numb us to our own crippling shortcomings, but Scripture is a mirror that is held up and which shows us what we already know to be true.

In order to understand the gospel, we must understand this simple truth. We don’t believe that we’re inherently bad just because the Bible tells us we are, we recognize that the Bible is inescapably correct when it diagnoses the root of our problems.

This accurate understanding of our own inability to be good is the beginning of the framework which will allow us to understand the gospel.

A Holy God

The reason sin gets in the way of humankind’s relationship with God is the simple fact that God is holy. When we say that God is holy, we mean that God is in a completely different category than anything else in the physical universe. God is the source of everything, and even our concepts of right and wrong come from the objective moral standard based on God’s very character. It’s not that good and evil are abstract concepts conceived by God, good is good because it adheres to God’s character, and evil is evil because it is contrary to God’s character.

When Adam and Eve sinned and rejected God’s authority to determine right and wrong, they overstepped their bounds and set themselves up as the ones who would determine right and wrong. That is the essence of the fall into sin. The problem is this: the thing that allows God to determine right and wrong is that he himself is the standard. The picture of reality that we have is a fraction of God’s perspective, which makes humankind laughably unqualified to be the ones who determine morality.

God’s perfect righteousness is the standard of what it means to be good. By this truth we recognize that every sin, every shortcoming, every mistake, separates us from God. Our own sin disqualifies us from being able to live eternally with God like we were intended to do.

The problem is that God is holy and perfect, and we are not. Every time we know what we should do, and don’t do it, we drive a wedge between us and God, further separating us. This is the nature of the dilemma that all humankind finds itself in.

We know we don’t measure up, we know that we’re separated from God, but we find ourselves incapable of fixing the problem on our own. Our sin inhibits us from doing anything to contribute to our own salvation.

The Good News of Jesus Christ

The situation that has just been described is existentially bad news. And this core problem has been identified by virtually every human civilization across the globe throughout human history. Everybody recognizes that there is a higher power, and we recognize that we are somehow estranged from that higher power. This is the premise of virtually every major world religion. The particulars may differ, but each different religious system is an attempt, by humankind, to earn our way back into a permanent reunion with God.

This is what makes the Christian faith fundamentally different from every other religious system (be it Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.). The truth of the human condition is that we are simply incapable of earning our own righteousness. 

Often I hear criticism that it’s unfair for God to hold us accountable for our sin without also weighing our good works. Why can’t our good works outweigh our sin?

The critique breaks down when you think about our own legal system. We are all engrained with a sense of justice. Our good works do not erase our sin for the same reason that a doctor convicted of murder in a court of law will not be acquitted simply because they’ve saved more people than they’ve murdered. The good in the rest of their life has nothing to do with their guilt of the crime in question. Regardless of how many people the guilty doctor has helped, the matter at hand is their guilt for the crime.

The truth is that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We are incapable of restoring our broken relationship with God. That is the bad news. If we are trying to earn our way into eternal life, what awaits us after death is eternal punishment for our own voluntary disregard for God and his rightful authority.

The term gospel literally means “good news.” The good news is that God has provided a way to be restored in spite of our inability to be righteous. In his great love, God sent his one and only son Jesus to take on human flesh and live among us. Jesus was unique in that he was fully human and yet at the same time fully God (a complex theological topic for another time).

Jesus’ full humanity means that he was one of us. He ate, drank, slept, felt pain, and had emotions just like we do. But Jesus’ full divinity means that he alone among the human race was capable of living a life without sin. Jesus came, living a sinless life, for the sole purpose of going to the cross and suffering humiliation, excruciating pain, and ultimately death.

The concept that one must grasp in order to understand the gospel is the substitutionary nature of Jesus’ suffering. What we mean by substitutionary is that Jesus suffered in your place, instead of you, so that you wouldn’t have to. Jesus substitutes himself for you, taking the punishment that you deserve for your personal sins, even though he alone among all of humankind was guiltless.

In the courtroom analogy, the doctor who is convicted of murder and sentenced to punishment is suddenly set free. To really grasp the profound gift of God’s undeserved grace, the gospel message would be equivalent to the judge passing the guilty verdict, then promptly volunteering to take the guilty party’s sentence in his place, exchanging the guilty verdict for the judge’s own perfectly clean record.

Jesus suffered on the cross, and on the cross the wrath of God was poured out for sin. Jesus was beaten, humiliated, and killed in a public spectacle in which God punished him for your sin. Having perfectly offered himself as a sacrifice in your place, Jesus died and rose from the dead on the third day, proving that Jesus really was God incarnate. This death in your place and resurrection to new life achieved the ultimate victory over sin and death. Because Jesus went to the cross, the debt you owe for your sin has been paid. It’s not something you earn, it’s not something you do, it’s a free gift.

The price has already been paid, and because of Jesus’ work on the cross, you are given an open invitation to call on Jesus’ name for the forgiveness of your sins. When you recognize your sin, and recognize your situation (guilty) before a Holy God, and you recognize that the verdict is inescapably guilty, you are given a lifeline.

Everything hinges on how you respond to the truth of the gospel message.

You need only accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior and recognize that Jesus paid the price you could never pay on your behalf, and submit to Jesus’ authority in your life. When you accept Jesus, something profound happens. The Holy Spirit takes up residence inside of you, and God begins to transform you from the inside out, drawing you away from the sin that used to rule in your life.

This is a beautiful truth because the nature of the gospel is not that you need to clean up your life in order to come to Jesus. Jesus comes to you, in spite of your sins, and all that is necessary for eternal life is a recognition of your sin, recognition that you find yourself incapable of earning eternal life, and accepting Jesus’ free gift of grace, trading your sin for eternal life and a relationship with God.

The gospel changes everything. It brings you from an enemy of God, dead in your sins and transgressions, into a loving family relationship where you’re given a new identity as a Child of God and are set free from the sin that used to hold you captive.

That is the essential truth of the gospel.