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The Essence of the Gospel of Jesus Christ

  • russellvcole1939
  • Jul 2
  • 8 min read

“Be ready to speak up and tell anyone who asks why you are living the way you are.”  (I Peter3:15 The Message Bible.)  This instruction was given by the apostle Peter to those who believe in and follow the Lord, Jesus Christ

I had an opportunity recently to do this very thing but was caught off-guard and was woefully inadequate in my attempt to answer a simple question, but one that required a complex answer.  This failure motivated me to organize my thoughts, and put them down, so that I wouldn’t fail again.  Hence comes “The Essence of the Gospel”.

Let’s start with what does “Gospel” mean?  This word is much used and most commonly refers to the good news of Jesus Christ, news that was spread in the early first century, specifically concerning His life, death and resurrection.  It includes God’s plan of salvation, the rescue, reconciliation, redemption, that is offered through faith in Jesus.  It is the story of who He was then, who He is now and what He brought to the people.

In The Jesus Bible these are some introductory remarks to Paul’s letter to the new church in Galatia. “The good news is that God pursued His people in love, knowing full well the extent of their sinfulness. Jesus lived a life of perfect conformity to the ancient Jewish law, given by Moses at the start of the great Exodus from Egypt, and He gives his righteous standing before God as a gift to His people. On the cross, Jesus became a curse on behalf of believers so they would never face the condemnation sin deserves (Galatians 3:13). Paul emphasized that these gifts—right standing before God and freedom from the wrath of God—are given apart from the works of the ancient Jewish law. They are now given as a gift of grace.  They are not deserved, are not merited and they cannot be earned.” (By who we are or what we have done or what we can do.)

One of the great mysteries of God, and there are many, is that God indwells believers by means of His Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit of the Living God empowers believers to live the lives for which God created them. The Holy Spirit produces in them that which the Jewish law could never produce. (Galatians 5:22–23) Those who are saved by faith will find this faith working in them to produce lives marked by love of God and of one another (Galatians 5:5–6). Jesus alone is the basis for the church’s hope—both for their salvation and their ongoing sanctification (being set apart, made holy). Contrary to what some churches have preached, and continue to preach, the fact is that for the believer, good works are not a prerequisite for salvation; rather, they are a response to salvation.

More From the New Testament:  This is how much God loved the world: He gave His Son, His one and only Son.  And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in Him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life.  God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending His Son to merely point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was.  He came to help, to put the world right again.  Anyone who trusts in Him is acquitted; and anyone who refuses to trust Him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it.  And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to Him. (John 3:16-18 The Message Bible.)

John the Baptist announced to those who came to repent of their sins and be baptized; “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” John 1:29.  John was the one commissioned to proclaim the coming of the Jewish Messiah and his proclamation would have been understood by the Jews because it was something that they had been anticipating for centuries!  They would have understood this proclamation because each year, for centuries, they held a holy feast, a seven day  observance of the Passover, an observance that they had been taught from childhood.  It had been ingrained in them for all these centuries.

In the Bible, which is the God-given and God-inspired Word of God, (regardless of what critics teach) the first four books of New Testament are called the Gospels, the “Good News”.  Each of these document the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth.  They present a narrative of His life lived, words spoken, truths taught, and miracles performed .  These accounts cover His public ministry of approximately three years.  They also bear witness to His death, resurrection and ascension, which provided the “why and the wherefore” of His life.

The core statement proclaimed in each of these accounts is that Jesus was fully man (human) and fully God! He wasn’t just a moral wise man or a great teacher of profound truths. He was – and is – the eternal God!

The accounts written by both Mathhew and Luke begin by establishing His ancestral “pedigree”.  It was very important to document to this audience of Jews that He was in fact a descendent of the King David, Israel’s greatest king.  This was critical because the prophets who centuries earlier foretold the coming of the Messiah were very specific that He would be of “the house of David”.   This was especially important because the first century audience who heard “the good news” were Jews, offspring of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, steeped in the Holy Scriptures. The basis for their spiritual life and worship was from the Old Testament prophecies and promises of the coming of the Mesiah, the Redeemer, the coming King, the One who would rule all creation for all eternity.  From their earliest, formative years, they had been taught to expect the coming of this Mighty One of God.  He was to be their warrior king, the one who would liberate them from oppression, the one who would redeem and rule.  He was the One who would reconcile this rebellious and sin-filled people with the Most Holy God, the “creator of everything in the heavens and on the earth”, setting everything “right” again. This promised Mesiah was to come from the lineage of King David, who would somehow provide for the redemption and reconciliation of this stiff-necked people, all the while establishing an everlasting Kingdom.

               The apostle Paul described it this way in his letter to the early church in Philippi when he wanted them to have the true sense of mind.  “Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of Himself.  He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of Himself that He had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what.  Not at all. When the time came, He set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human!  Having become human, He stayed human.  It was an incredibly humble process.  He didn’t claim special privileges.  Instead, He lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death, the worst kind of death at that, a crucifixion.  Because of that obedience, God lifted Him high and honored Him far beyond anyone or anything, ever, so that all created beings in heaven and on earth, even those long dead and buried, will bow in worship before this Jesus Christ, and call out in praise that He is the Master of all, to the glorious honor of God the Father. Philippians 2:6-10 The Message Bible.

      The book of The Acts of the Apostles follows the four Gospels and provides the account of the establishment of the Church, also called the “body” of the Lord Jesus Christ.  It is an amazing account, well worth the read, explaining how this Good News of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ was spread, and continues to be spread, throughout the world.  

  What follows here is from the commentary contained within the pages of The Jesus Bible.

 The word salvation itself implies rescue.  In Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, he makes it clear that all humanity is desperately lost in sin.  The just punishment from a holy God for that sin is death.  Salvation, then, is not only rescue from our sin, but it is also rescue from the justified punishment of God. God is perfect in His justice, and because of that, is justified in His wrath toward those who don’t trust Him.  However, the rescue that comes through faith in Jesus completely erases the eternal separation between a holy God and imperfect humanity.

Paul, in this letter to the church in Rome, is most convincing that this life-changing rescue comes only in one “package” and that “package” is delivered in a single way by a single “package deliverer”, Jesus of Nazareth, the only begotten Son of God the Father!  This “package” is delivered through the grace of God, which is nothing less than His undeserved, unmerited, unearned favor and kindness.  This is a gift from God that can only be unwrapped and possessed by faith!

Continuing with the Jesus Bible commentary. 

What is the result of this great salvation that comes by grace and through faith?  The answer is a reconciled relationship with God.  The fact that stands at the heart of the gospel is that God desires to be in relationship with His people.  Rebellious people are reconciled with their holy God through the cross. Ultimately, all who come to Jesus in faith and trust are saved to the great glory of God.  Because salvation is by grace alone, apart from good works, God alone receives the credit for this complete and astonishing deliverance.  Romans 1:1-17.

To me, the essence of the Gospel is this:

From the very beginning, God the Creator, knew that His creation, humanity, would “fail” in fulfilling His desire to have a living, loving, obedient, worshiping and intimate relationship with His creation – human beings.  Because He knew, God had made ready a plan of “salvation”, the reconciling of this disobedient, self-loving, head-strong, sinful humanity.  This story of salvation would unfold over the period of many centuries, coming to fulfillment with the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, His only begotten Son.  He sent to this humanity, through His “chosen people” Israel, a “savior”, the only One that could provide for this salvation, the One who could provide the reconciliation with a righteous and holy God.  This One is Jesus, the God-become-man born of a virgin, born in a cave used the shelter and feed livestock.  This One was, and is, fully God and fully human.  And the only means by which this reconciliation could be achieved is through the sinless life He led and demonstrated, through His voluntarily giving up His life by means of the most viscous method of capital punishment known to mankind.  The proof of this plan was Jesus resurrected from the dead, returning to the Father from whom He came and sending the Holy Spirit to enable believers to live the new life which they had been granted.   Today Jesus sits “at the right hand of the Father”.  

Jesus, the Christ, the Anointed One, clearly declared “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.  No one comes to the Father except through Me.”  “Through Me” means that if you confess with your mouth and believe in our heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved!” Romans 10:9.

One final thing to say; it is not “understand in order to believe”.  Rather, it is “believe and you will understand”.  It’s not “seeing is believing” but “believing is seeing!”  May God bless you by opening your understanding to the scriptures.

 
 
 

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