What is the gospel?

The gospel is good news—the good news of what God has done in Jesus Christ.

God is Holy. He is completely pure, good, perfect, sovereign, rightful ruler over all His

creation. God is loving, compassionate, and gracious. God is supreme in nature and in

character.

The Bible depicts human beings, all human beings everywhere, as in revolt against

God, and therefore under his rightful judgment. But although God stands over us in

judgment because of our sin, quite amazingly he stands over us in love, because he is

that kind of God—and the gospel is the good news of what God, in love, has done in

Jesus Christ, especially in Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, to deal with our sin and

to reconcile us to himself.

Christ bore our sin on the cross. He bore the penalty, turned aside God’s judgment,

God’s wrath, from us, and cancelled sin. The brokenness of our lives he restores; the

shattered relationships he rebuilds in the context of the church; the new life that we

human beings find in Christ is granted out of the complete grace of God. It is received

by faith as we repent of our sins and turn to Jesus. We confess him as Lord, and bow

to him joyfully.

When we truly confess Christ and Lord and trust in His salvation, we are united to

Christ, adopted in God’s family, justified, reconciled, and redeemed.

One day he will make all things new. The good news culminates in a new heaven and a

new earth, the home of righteousness, where neither sin nor any of its effects can

survive, and where we enjoy the presence of God forever in the context of resurrection

existence.