WHAT IS THE GOSPEL?

Accept Jesus, He died on the cross for your sins. Give your heart to Jesus because God loves you and has a plan for your life. These are well known statements that are used repeatedly in modern evangelism when sharing the Gospel with the unsaved, and while they certainly are biblical concepts, it should shock the average Christian to know that they were never used by the first evangelists in the Book of Acts when conveying the Gospel message. Whether we are speaking of Peter, John, Steven, or Paul, the evangelistic sermons in the Acts of the Apostles do not record a single appeal to conversion on the basis that Christ died for our sins, nor do we see a call to salvation because God loves us and has a plan for our lives. Shocking right? But those are precisely the terms we use today to convey the gospel truth to our society, who so desperately needs it. If we desire to obtain similar results as the early church, perhaps we should examine their message and their methods more attentively.

Several years ago, I met weekly with a group of local pastors for prayer and to encourage each other in the work of the ministry. Gradually the group began to grow as more and more pastors from the community came. It began with pastors who were like-minded for the most part and shared common views of scripture and faith, but I began to notice things that were being shared that didn’t align with a biblical world-view, and I became concerned. On my final day with the group, a visiting pastor from Canada came as a guest of our moderator, a local guy who started the weekly sessions, and from his initial introduction, you could sense something very different about him. He was young, gregarious, very hip, and he had a way of dominating the conversation that annoyed me intensely. We began to discuss the subject of the gospel and how we could best spread the good news in our area, through our individual churches, but the conversation quickly gravitated toward good works, charitable deeds, helping the poor, feeding the hungry, etc… it was what we would normally consider the so called, ‘social gospel’.

But after much discussion, led in large part by our new friend from the north, there was never even a mention of the actual message of the gospel, and this also annoyed me intensely. Finally, I felt compelled to speak up and remind the pastors that all of the things they were speaking about were commendable goals, but unless the actually gospel message was shared, it would be in vain. There was a long silence, some strange facial expressions, followed by the Canadian minister’s snappy reply of, “Well that all depends on what you mean by the gospel!” Now I had the strange facial expression, as I contemplated the ironic position I was in, of having to explain what the gospel message is, to a bunch of pastors, most of them twice my senior in years of ministry. So I began to discuss the good news of forgiveness of sins, faith in Jesus' death and resurrection, salvation from hell, eternal life in heaven, etc…

But again, I was hit with the long silence and strange expressions. They looked at me like I was a confused time-traveler from 1953, and they urgently needed to set me straight. Our visiting pastor from Canada took the lead once again and informed me that, “Oh we don’t want to use scare tactics like that on people, holding heaven and hell over their heads, like a belligerent threat. We just need to show the love of God and compassion toward people by meeting their physical needs.” The rest of the pastors quickly piled on with similar opinions until I had had enough. I stood to my feet and walked out of the room thinking to myself, “I’ve got better things to do with my time than hang around with pastors who can’t even agree on what the gospel is.

The experience was very unsettling to me, and in-light of the changing culture, fluctuating values and morals, and the shift to a post-modern way of thinking, I began to study the subject more intently, just to make sure I wasn’t the one who was mistaken. Over the years, I come to the conclusion that, we need the gospel truth preached more than ever, with the same kind of full throated, passionate appeal that the Apostle Peter first gave it. But what is the Gospel? If you were asked to present the gospel message, using only the terms that the Apostles used, free of modern evangelistic verbiage, could you do it? If you are not a follower of Jesus Christ, are you sure that you have heard the true message of the gospel, or have you only received the watered down, westernized, seeker friendly, post-modern, politically correct, 'social' version of the gospel of Jesus Christ?

The Gospel is simple this: Any honest person, whether they want to admit it or not, must concede that we as humans are flawed to the core of our being, and that moral failure is an inescapable part of who we are. The Bible calls this “sin”, (which means, falling short, missing the mark, failing to meet the standard, etc…) The standard for perfection is established by our creator, who also establishes the penalty for breaking His standard; which is eternal confinement in an incomprehensibly horrible place called hell. This of course, is really bad news! But our creator has also presented each of us with a counter offer of forgiveness and full exoneration of our sin, if we first turn from that sin, and turn to Jesus, in faith that He will save us from Hell. Jesus is uniquely capable of doing this, because He alone has died and has been resurrected from death, by the power of God, thus testifying that He has been approved by God, and is the only one capable of saving us from an eternity in Hell. Good News!