“What is the gospel?”

Whether you’re a new believer, someone who’s trying to study Christianity, or a long-term churchgoer, this is one question that you will want to understand with absolute clarity. It seems like such a simple question on the surface. But where do we begin to answer it? Why do so many Christians struggle to put it into words?

Begin by listening to the following brief explanation by Don Carson and answering the questions below.

We must get at what the gospel is by getting past the problematic assumptions in our culture. And in order to do this, we find the need to begin by framing the gospel as part of a story—the way it first came to us. Let’s examine this story in the next section.

Course curated by Phil Thompson

The Bible is the story of the gospel. It is a single story that answers some of the biggest questions of humanity, like:

1. What is wrong with the world?
2. What is the solution to what’s wrong in the world?

Watch the following video from The Bible Project on the story of the Bible quickly from beginning to end. As you watch this video, reflect on what the big story of the Bible has to say about those questions.

So, let’s sum this up a bit. Here are some ways we can summarize the gospel using the big story of the Bible:

At its briefest, the gospel is a discourse about Christ, that he is the Son of God and became man for us, that he died and was raised, and that he has been established as Lord over all things.

This much St. Paul takes in hand and spins out in his epistles. He bypasses all the miracles and incidents (in Christ’s ministry) which are set forth in the four Gospels, yet he includes the whole gospel adequately and abundantly. This may be seen clearly and well in his greeting to the Romans, where he says what the gospel is, and then declares:

“Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord,” etc.

There you have it. The gospel is a story about Christ, God’s and David’s son, who died and was raised, and is established as Lord. This is the gospel in a nutshell.

Martin Luther, Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, 94.

Another simple summary is this:

[The gospel is] the announcement of the good news of Jesus’ work to restore sinful image-bearers to the rightful worship of God.

Matt Rogers, Aspire: Volume One, 96

These attempts to define the gospel are, in reality, attempts to describe the story of the Bible. Now that we’ve attempted to summarize the story of gospel, let’s zoom in on particular facets of the gospel.

If there’s one thing just about anyone, anywhere, with any worldview can agree on, it’s that the world we live in is horribly broken. Things aren’t the way they should be. And that’s just where the Christian gospel starts. The good news begins with some really bad news.

The concept of sin can be explained using many terms and from many angles. In the grand story of the good news of Jesus, sin is the dark backdrop that explains a world gone bad; it gives contrast to the solution that the good news has to offer.

Before we begin to examine the core of the good news, listen to the interview below. Dr. D. A. Carson provides a thorough summary of what the entire Bible teaches about the doctrine of sin.

The dark backdrop of sin makes hope grow dim. Is there a way forward? Is there a shot at redemption? Whatever chance there is at a rescue from our wrecked status needs to be far more powerful than the chaos that surrounds us. It’s time to discover Jesus, the person who is proclaimed in the good news. The gospel is good news all because of him. This is how Paul describes what is of first importance in the gospel message:

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. (1 Corinthians 15:3–5)

The central elements of Paul’s gospel presentation could be summarized as follows:

1. Jesus died for our sin.
2. Jesus fulfilled Scripture.
3. Jesus was buried.
4. Jesus rose from the dead.
5. Jesus appeared alive to multiple eyewitnesses.

In other words, to Paul, the message of the gospel–the message that he traveled the world to tell–was all about Jesus. Watch the two videos below as you orient yourself to the idea of Jesus as the central figure of our redemption. Consider how he compares to the brokenness of sin in your heart and in the world around us.

This doctrine is central to the Christian faith, but it by no means an easy claim to accept. Begin by watching the videos below. What do people make of this man, Jesus?

The truth is, we’re all over the map on who Jesus is and what that means for us today. But the gospel presents a unified claim about Jesus–a claim that offers sweeping hope for something better than the mess we’re in. Watch a few of the videos below to get a sense of who Jesus claimed to be and what our options are in light of those claims.

The surprising aspect of the stories of Jesus recorded for us in the New Testament is that they all focus primarily on the death of the main character. An inordinate amount of time is spent on what typical biographers try to avoid. Why was this? The videos below explore this question.

But for the writers of the New Testament, there was something profound about the sort of death that Jesus died and what happened after his death. And it is this idea of the resurrected Son of God that the Apostles take with them to the nations. The resurrection of the God-man, Jesus, was central to the good news that rocked the world of the first century. In the words of the Apostle Paul:

 

Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. (1 Cor. 15:12–19)

 

In the videos below we consider the impact and historicity of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The gospel presents us with the victorious God-man, Jesus, who lived a perfect life, died an unjust death on the cross, and rose again, beating death. The gospel presents good news of hope crystalized in a single person. It tells us a story of someone wholly different from any religious leader who has ever lived. So to miss Jesus is to miss the gospel.

Grace. You will be hard-pressed to find a more commonly used word in churches than “grace.” But what does it mean? What’s so special about it? What makes grace, well, grace?

To begin to answer these questions, we need to look deep into the character of God himself, the author of grace. It’s in him that we find what grace is really all about.

We’ve seen the source of grace, but we still need to define the term better. What does the Christian gospel say that grace is or does? Ryan Reeves provides answers to that question in the short video below.

Grace, as talked about in the good news, finds its source in the character of God. It is God’s giving kindness to us when we deserved judgment. It’s the kind of grace that the Apostle John talks about when he says,

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (1:14)

John says that Jesus was “the Word” of God. In other words, Jesus was the greatest message that God has ever sent and will ever send to humanity. John is claiming that if God had something to say to the world that he wanted to be heard loud and clear, it would be summed up in Jesus. And Jesus didn’t come as the message of God drawing a sword and bringing condemnation on the world. Instead, Jesus summed up his own mission this way:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. (John 3:16–19)

Jesus’ message was a message of grace. This is what John identifies back in chapter one of his Gospel–Jesus is “full of grace and truth.” Jesus himself in all that he was and in all that he did and in all that he offers to us is God’s grace-gift to us, the rebels. Next up, we’ll look at what this gift of Jesus accomplishes for broken sinners.

So far, the story of the gospel as it connects to our own looks something like this:

1. We have a problem, sin. We can’t beat it. It has captured our entire selves and all of humanity. Everything is drenched in sin and depravity and is an affront to our holy Creator God.
2. Into this sin-drenched world steps the God-man, Jesus. He was everything that we aren’t. He lived perfectly, was unjustly killed, and rose from the dead. And in his resurrection he was marked out as the Son of God (Rom. 1:4).
3. Jesus’ death extended a gift to undeserving rebels, grace. Mercy and pardon are available to the worst of sinners and the best of Pharisees.

In this section, we’ll examine the linkage between grace and sinners. How exactly does the good news of free grace in Jesus do something about that problem of sin? The answer: justification.

This doctrine of justification is a teaching that was dusted off and took the world by storm again in the Reformation. Take a few minutes to look back at how this doctrine impacted two of the great reformers.

Now fast-forward five-hundred years to the present. Are challenges to justification over now? John Piper addresses one challenge to justification in the video below.

Piper mentions the term “imputation” to describe what takes place in justification. What is the connection between these two terms? D. A. Carson explains this and some of the other aspects and terms related to salvation.

How do faith and repentance fit into the gospel? Dr. Sam Storms connects them to the landscape portrait of the gospel in the video below.

But what does it mean to have faith? Does it look like some kind of moral superiority? What if I have doubts? Put another way, the intensity of our faith is not what is under question in how we respond to the gospel, but the object of our faith. Tim Keller and D. A. Carson address issues related to faith and doubt in the videos below.

One who is justified by grace alone through faith alone will begin to be sanctified. This is the gospel in the everyday life of everyone who has trusted in Christ for salvation. These terms are challenging to keep straight, so consider the following video from John Piper, where he explains what they mean.

Let’s look further into where sanctification leads. The discussion between Piper and Keller below is helpful in exploring these implications.

In the grand story of salvation, there are three acts:

1. Justification: God declares us righteous because of the righteousness of Jesus credited to our account.
2. Sanctification: God progressively begins making us into what he has declared us to be.
3. Glorification: God finishes making us perfect, just like Jesus. What God has declared and how we live are one and the same. This event takes place after we die and stand in the presence of God.

To better understand this progression, R. C. Sproul uses a helpful spatial analogy in the video below.

The previous sections have outlined the reason for and method of the gospel, but what’s the point? Why is there a “good news” when God could have been completely righteous just to let the “bad news” be the final say over the fate of humanity? John Piper ties together a definition of the gospel that ends and highlights the grand purpose for the gospel.

Based on what we’ve covered so far, here are some helpful summaries of what the gospel is and some helpful definitions of the key terms.

The following definitions are from Matt Rogers’ Aspire: Part One, a discipleship guide that is aimed at teaching people the basics of what the gospel is and how it applies to life:

Gospel: The announcement of the good news of Jesus’ work to restore sinful image-bearers to the rightful worship of God.

Kingdom of God: The rule of God demonstrated on earth among a worshipping people.

Idolatry: Worshipping as God anything other than God.

Wrath: The just anger of a holy God toward sin.

Incarnation: The coming of God to earth in the flesh in the form of a man who was both fully God and fully man.

Atonement: The process by which God makes it possible for sinful humans to have a relationship with Him through the death of a substitute.

Propitiation: The wrath of God fully poured out upon a substitute (1 Jn 2:2).

Justification: The formal act whereby God declares a person not guilty for sin.

Redemption: God’s work to free His people from slavery.

Righteousness: Perfect obedience to the law of God.

Sanctification: The work of God to change fallen sinners into faithful worshipers.

Discipleship: The process of growing in your understanding of God, love for God, and obedience to God through intentional relationships.

Disciple: A person who worships God rightly because of the work of Jesus.