What Is the True Gospel?

Few words are used more, and understood less, than the word gospel. It is attached to music, to movements, to methods of success, and to a hundred messages that have little to do with what the apostles actually preached. If we are to return to the true Gospel, we have to begin where Scripture begins, and let it define its own terms.

The word simply means good news. But it is good news of a particular kind, about a particular person, accomplishing a particular work. Paul stated it as plainly as it can be stated.

Good news about a person

The Gospel is not first a set of instructions but an announcement. Before it tells us anything to do, it tells us what God has done. At its centre stands Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who took on flesh, lived the life we could not live, and died the death we deserved. The Gospel is news before it is a command, because grace comes before every good work.

Good news about our real problem

We cannot understand the good news until we feel the weight of the bad. Scripture is honest about our condition. We have sinned, we are separated from a holy God, and there is nothing in us that can bridge that distance. Any message that flatters us into thinking we are basically fine has already lost the Gospel, because it has removed the very thing Christ came to answer.

The Gospel is not advice for good people. It is rescue for the lost.

Good news that must be received

This news calls for a response. Not the response of trying harder, but of turning and trusting. To repent is to turn from sin and self. To believe is to rest the whole weight of your soul on Christ alone. Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, and it is offered freely to everyone who will receive it.

Here is where the true Gospel parts ways with every counterfeit. The counterfeits always add something. Believe and do this. Trust and become that. Have faith, and also earn it. But the Gospel of Scripture leaves us with empty hands and a full Saviour. Christ has done it. We receive it.

Good news that has not changed

Cultures shift and fashions pass, but this message does not age. The same Gospel that turned the ancient world upside down is the one we still proclaim, in English and in Kannada, in cities and in villages, to the child and to the scholar. It is the power of God unto salvation, and it needs no improvement. Our joy is simply to hand it on, unbent and unashamed.