Back to my question: What is the Gospel?

As a starter it is the description given to the first four books of the New Testament, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke & John. These are the stories of Jesus, his birth, life, ministry, death and resurrection.

In Christian life and language the word Gospel is also used as a shorthand term to explain the reason for the story of Jesus. Jesus lived and died to be and the bring the Good News, or the Gospel, to mankind. What therefore is this Gospel that Jesus came to be and to proclaim?

It encompasses sin, forgiveness and eternal life in heaven. It is summarised in one of the best known verses in the bible John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

The Gospel starts with our sin. All of us have sinned and as a result are separated from God. The Gospel is needed because we have no way of restoring our relationship with God, only He could do that.

The Gospel is then about forgiveness. In the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross we have the possibility of forgiveness for our sin if we will accept him as our Lord & Saviour. Acts 4:12 “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”

So, in Jesus, we are saved from our sin and the eternal consequences of our sin. We are also saved to an eternal destiny in Heaven. As those who have accepted Jesus and submitted our lives to Him as our Lord, Christians can be absolutely certain of their eternal destiny. When we die we will be with Jesus in Heaven, Halleluia!

So the gospel is about the forgiveness of sin and the certainty of eternity lived in Heaven. We know that we are forgiven and we know where we’re going.

The question I’ve started to grapple with over the past few weeks is whether what I’ve said above is it, or is there more to the Gospel than I’ve previously thought?

Next time I’ll be looking at the references to the word Gospel within the bible. After all the bible should be the first place that we turn to for our understanding.

Thank you for the few comments and responses that I received to my last post. I’ll be returning to that theme soon.

Today I read an article in the Spectator that really made me stop and think and here are some quotes from it:

80 percent of all acts of religious discrimination in the world today are directed at Christians. Statistically speaking, that makes Christians by far the most persecuted religious body on the planet.

An average of 100,000 Christians have been killed in what the centre calls a ‘situation of witness’ each year for the past decade. That works out to 11

Christians killed somewhere in the world every hour, seven days a week and 365 days a year, for reasons related to their faith.

Of the 65 Christian churches in Baghdad, 40 have been bombed at least once since the beginning of the 2003 US-led invasion.

The truth is that in the West, a threat to religious freedom means someone might get sued; in many other parts of the world, it means someone might get shot, and surely the latter is the more dramatic scenario.

‘When I hear that so many Christians in the world are suffering, am I indifferent, or is it as if a member of my own family is suffering?’ the Pope asked his following. ‘Am I open to that brother or that sister in my family who’s giving his or her life for Jesus Christ?’

In 2011, the Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem, Fouad Twal, who leads a church with more than its fair share of new martyrs, phrased the same questions more plaintively during a conference in London. He bluntly asked: ‘Does anybody hear our cry? How many atrocities must we endure before somebody, somewhere, comes to our aid?

The full article from The Spectator can be read here: http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9041841/the-war-on-christians/