What is the Gospel

You, like me, have sinned against God. Basically this means we’ve all fallen short of His perfect standard. You see, God is holy and righteous, He’s perfect and He stands apart from sin. We’re not and so we’ve separated ourselves in many ways from Him by what we’ve thought, what we’ve said, what we’ve done and even in what we’ve left undone. We’re guilty. None of us make the grade, make the cut, stands acceptable.

Now, there are results to this stain of sin in our lives, some of them are temporal others eternal. God says in the Bible that the wages of sin is death. This isn’t just a physical death but an eternal, everlasting death. And He’s just; we’ll get what we deserve.

Pretty gloomy? Well that’s the bad news. The good news is that Jesus, as a demonstration of God’s love died for sinners like you and me so that those who come to Him may have eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen! Bottom line, Jesus’ death paid for the penalty of God’s wrath against our sins and what’s more His resurrection proves that God accepted Jesus’ death as the payment.

God has revealed in His Word that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. Salvation, the forgiveness of sins, is available to all who will trust in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour. This Gospel is a call to live a life of faith joined with turning away from our sins and turning to God in repentance. It’s not something that we can do for ourselves but a gracious gift from Him.

While the wrath of God rests on sinners the saved are at peace with Him having been reconciled to God through His Son Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. Because of that great work we can rest secure in the certain promise that nothing will ever separate us from His love.

All this means that we, with Paul, can say, "Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!"