What is the Gospel?

(We are going back to the basics at Wellston Hope UMC - this is part of that series)

Last week, we looked at what is called the Great Commission – where Jesus told his followers to go and make disciples of all nations. Our mission statement comes from that commission: to be and make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. But after I finished preaching last week, I realized something: we need to be on the same page when it comes to sharing the gospel.

In Galatians 1:6-9, Paul writes to the church in Galatia, saying: I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel — which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!  As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!

There has been a lot of confusion about what the gospel really is, and people everywhere are following a different gospel, which, as Paul points out, is really no gospel at all. To get at the reality of the gospel, we have to first know what the gospel is. The word “gospel” means “good news” – so what is the good news?

W.C. Fields used to tell about a contest where the first prize was a week in Philadelphia. Second prize was two weeks in Philadelphia. For good news to be good news, we have to know what “good” is. That takes us all the way back to Genesis. When God created the earth, after doing everything from separating the dry ground from the waters to creating the plants and animals, God pronounced it good. But at the end of creation, Genesis 1:31 tells us that God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.

We start with God and humanity in perfect union, but it doesn’t stay that way. In Genesis 3, the serpent, described as more crafty than any of the wild animals God had made, entices Adam and Eve into sin. I want to pause a moment here to say that Satan is extremely crafty. He takes God’s Truth and bends it just a little bit. He makes sin attractive, or he distracts us from godly Truth, little by little. When it came to Adam and Eve, he distracted them from God’s rule, asking, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” (Genesis 3:1). He knew that wasn’t what God had said, and so did Adam and Eve. But that’s the way Satan works. He takes what we know is true and mocks it, or he takes what we know is true and distorts it.

When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, in a sense they ruined it for everyone to the point that David can write in Psalm 53 that God looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. Everyone has turned away, they have together become corrupt; there is no one who does good; not even one. (Psalm 53:2-3).  His son Solomon echoes the sentiment, saying: There is not a righteous man on earth who does what is right and never sins. (Ecclesiastes 7:20).

Our culture teaches that people are intrinsically good, but which one of you had to teach your child to be selfish? Who had to teach your child to lie? Which of you had to sit down with their two year old and teach them to say “No!” or “Mine!”? That’s just not the way our lives work.

In Matthew 19:16, a man came to Jesus and asked a question that is still asked today – maybe not asked out loud, but certainly lived out by many people. He asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?” This is a prevalent mindset in our culture, but it is not a Christian mindset. This is Hinduism.

Jesus later asked the man to sell all his possessions and give to the poor – because he knew that this man’s wealth was an idol, getting in the way of his relationship with God. But listen to Jesus’ immediate response to the “what do I have to do to get eternal life” question: “Why do you ask me about what is good? Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good.” (Matthew 19:17a) There is only One who is good, and it’s not you or me. So don’t expect your goodness to get you to heaven.

The problem is a fundamental misunderstanding of the gospel itself.

God is a holy God, holy meaning entirely other than us, set apart from us, completely unstained by sin. Because of God’s utter holiness, God will not and cannot tolerate sin in his presence. Habakkuk 1:13 proclaims about God: Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong. The fact that nobody is good means that something has to give. And so God, abundant in steadfast love and mercy, made the way for us to be reconciled to himself… through Jesus Christ, who came as the perfect sacrifice, took our sins upon himself, justifying us – which means he made us just as if we had never sinned.

God did not simply remove the punishment for our sin, but he actually made us, who were stained by sin, clean. In his omnipotence (meaning all-powerfulness), God actually wipes away the very existence of our sins. He’s not just a friendly grandfather in the sky who pretends his bratty grandchildren didn’t do what he thinks they did – he actually makes us clean.

There tend to be a couple of false gospels that spring up in our culture – and these among people who purport to be Christians. The first is that God somehow needs help in this matter. I already mentioned the attitude of making sure your good deeds outweigh your bad – this idea is so strong in our society that I need to mention it again. You cannot save you. If you could, Jesus would not have come to earth. You can’t save you because God requires perfection, and you can’t clean up your past. Only Jesus can clean up your past!

An unfortunate side-effect of this kind of thinking is that when we are cleaned up, we can begin to believe that it was all because of our efforts that now we’re right with God. After all, we do all the right things. We are the ones in church, obviously. We haven’t missed a day of Bible reading or prayer in years. We, we, we, all the way home. And we judge our righteousness by the things we do. But the problem here is this is not Christianity. There are many people who call themselves Christians who really follow a religion called Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. This religion teaches that you have to do the right things (moralism) and that then God will make you feel better (therapeutic) but otherwise God doesn’t intervene in human affairs (Deism). Most of us have at some point or another tried to modify our behavior, and it doesn’t work. Sure, it works for a while, but overall, it just frustrates us. There are people who are really good at it, but most of the time, someone who can change their bad behavior all on their own ends up being the most self-righteous jerk in the room. I had a fraternity brother who quit smoking and whenever he’d see someone else light up, he’d go smack the cigarette out of their mouth because he was just that self-righteous. That’s not Christianity either.

A big problem is that moralism and legalism require your action for salvation. Any time we require anything else besides Jesus for our salvation, we’ve missed the point. That “Jesus plus” mentality is plain wrong. It’s either all by God’s grace through faith or it’s not. It’s not both. “Jesus plus” is not the gospel at all. And the idea that God doesn’t intervene in human affairs flies in the face of the Bible, which teaches that God has given us Himself, in the Person of the Holy Spirit, to live within us, to guide and encourage, to comfort and rebuke, to show us our sins and lead us to God.

Another false gospel our culture is enamored with is that our behavior doesn’t matter. Once we come to Jesus, we’ve done our part and that’s it. We don’t allow the gospel to transform us. We understand that the Gospel isn’t “Jesus plus” and they know that it’s all about God’s gracious gift to us, given regardless of our unworthiness – while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, proving God’s love for us. Unfortunately, there are some people who think, “God did that for me without regard for my behavior, so my behavior doesn’t matter.”

If you’re not any different from someone who doesn’t know Jesus at all, that’s a problem. If the only thing that separates you from a non-Christian is where you go on Sunday morning, that’s a problem. The problem is that you want Jesus to be your savior – you accept his sacrifice on the cross for your salvation – but you won’t allow him to be your Lord.

When you allow Jesus to be both Savior and Lord, he transforms you.

I don’t know most of you very well at all – I’m working on names at this point, but every church has people for whom the expectation is that Sunday morning is their one-stop shop for all your spiritual needs. Think about it this way: what would your physical life be like if you only ate once a week? And so you think your spiritual life is any different?

Or, to use the metaphor of marriage – most of you wouldn’t think about marrying someone you didn’t know. But many of you don’t know the heart of Jesus. So can you accurately call yourself a Christian?

A couple of years back, I was visiting a friend in the nursing home. She and her husband were there, and we got to talking about marriage. I asked her, “How long have you and your husband been married?” She answered proudly, “Twenty years!” Her husband looked apologetically at me and said, “Her medication is messing with her mind.” They had been married nearly 60 years. But there are some Christians who have been in church 20, 30, 50, 60 years and they don’t know Jesus!

So, how do you know Jesus if you don’t already? Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. To give him your all. To seek after him with everything you are. How do you do that? Delight in his Word. Make reading the Bible a regular part of your day. In fact, give God the best part of your day. Give God the top spot in everything you do. Make sure God has a prominent position in every conversation – not necessarily just talking about God, but pointing people in his direction. Some people would tell you to “fake it ‘til you make it” but that’s not good advice at all – it would be better described as fake it ‘til you fake it because your heart isn’t changed by faking it. In fact, you just grow more and more bitter the longer you fake it. But what would happen if instead of faking it, you went along and spent time with God? If you are regularly interacting with God, watching God at work, working alongside other Christians, asking God to reveal himself to you, you will grow in your relationship with him.