It tells us that God loves us and wants a relationship with us.
What the gospel is not
The gospel is not a list of rules and regulations. It is not good advice; it is good news.
There is no shortage of advice around about how to be right with God, but much of it involves our own efforts to be good. The problem is, we don’t have the ability to keep our own moral standards, much less God’s. The gospel, thankfully, states that the way to God is not through good works, but through faith, as the Apostle Paul reminded the Christians in Ephesus:
“By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).
What the gospel is
The gospel points us to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as the person to put our faith in – because “God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).
There is bad news – we are “sinners”, separated from God by our wrong actions. Because God is good, sin accumulates a moral debt and wrong actions must be punished.
But there is also good news – instead of demanding that we must pay our debt for sin, God has offered to pay for us. More than that, He has already made the payment by sending His perfect, sinless Son to die for us.
God, in Christ, through His death on a cross, has paid the price we owe, and borne the judgment we deserve.
What the gospel does
The gospel doesn’t tell us how to live our lives, it introduces us to a person. The message is not about a religion but a relationship.
Religion says: “live this way, and you will earn your way to God”. The gospel says “Jesus died for you, to meet the cost of your way to God”. Jesus is the Saviour you need. By coming to Him through faith, you will experience the hope, the joy, the peace that is missing from your life.
