The word 'gospel' means 'good news'. The word gospel comes from the old Anglo-Saxon word in Old English; 'god spell' that means 'good message' or 'good news'. Generally speaking, it is the birth, life, teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that is found in the first four books of the New Testament in the Bible. These are the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Often Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are themselves called the 'gospels'.
What is the best news you have ever received? Maybe the best news you've ever heard was when your wife agreed to marry you. Maybe it was the first cries of your newborn children, or maybe it was that you got the job you've always dreamed of.
The good news that is found in the Bible is so astonishing and so transforming that it makes all of the good news that you've ever heard look really small and insignificant. The news is that there really is a God. He knows you and has counted every hair on your head, He loves you with an endless love that knows no boundaries and you can know Him and have a relationship with Him. You can be with God, in a perfect and indescribable and inexpressible joy forever. Now that is what we call good news!!!
There is much more to life than birth, family, school, work, retirement, illness and death. The gospel is God's love letter to humanity. God loves you and wants to have a relationship with you. The very same being that created the seemingly endless universe, the same being who breathed life into the world, desires a one-on-one relationship with you.
However, God is perfectly holy, perfectly just and cannot even look upon sin. God actually requires us to be perfect. To humanity, that is not very good news. Because even a single sinful thought makes us sinful and unable to be with God.
“48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
If you have ever told a lie, even a small one, ever, that means you are a liar in the eyes of God. Have you ever stolen anything that did not belong to you, regardless of its value? If your answer is yes, then in the eyes of God, you are a thief. Have you ever had lustful thoughts about someone other than your own spouse, ever? Then according to scripture, you have committed adultery and are unfit to be in the presence of the Most Holy God.
“27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
As you might realize, those are only three of the Ten Commandments of God found in Exodus 20. The point being, that we cannot possibly be holy and perfect enough by ourselves to be in the presence of God. The Good News of the Bible is that God has a plan to make you holy enough and perfect enough to be in His presence.
The Bible teaches us that Jesus Christ was God Himself in human form. Jesus lived a perfect life on Earth in your place, making you worthy of Heaven. Jesus suffered the just wrath of God and died on a Roman cross in your place for the life that you have lived. In that, Jesus defeated death, so that we can have eternal life and live in His presence forevermore.
"We believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, in His virgin birth, in His sinless life, in His miracles, in His vicarious and atoning death, in His bodily resurrection, in His ascension to the right hand of the Father, in His personal future return." This is how the Lord Jesus Christ is viewed by those who trust in God's Word. This statement is printed in each month of Pentecostal Evangel magazine, which is the official weekly magazine of the Assemblies of God.
Jesus is the only way to salvation. There is no other. Because of who He is and what He has done for us, there is something that we must do to be saved from eternal separation from the Father. Death is a wall that everyone must face someday. Your final day on earth could be decades away, or it could be even today. Everyone must face this wall. But, hallelujah, a doorway has been provided in that wall and one man stands in that doorway. The way to everlasting life is through that one man. His name is Jesus.
“No One is Righteous
9 What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all! We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin.
10 As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one;
11 there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.
12 All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”
13 “Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.” “The poison of vipers is on their lips.”
14 “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”
15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;
16 ruin and misery mark their ways,
17 and the way of peace they do not know.”
18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. 20 Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.
Righteousness Through Faith
21 But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished 26 he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
27 Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? On that of observing the law? No, but on that of faith. 28 For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law. 29 Is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too, 30 since there is only one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. 31 Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith? Not at all! Rather, we uphold the law.”