What is the Gospel?
You have heard it before, I have some good news for you and I have some bad news for you. The word, “gospel”, means good news, that God loved you so much that he sent his son, Jesus, to save you. To save you from this world and get you to heaven to be with Him forever, to save you from yourself-sometimes your own worst enemy, and to save you from your other enemy, Satan, who you probably don’t even believe exists. The bad news is that you have to admit that you need a saviour. The truth is that we all need a saviour, since none of us is perfect; we are all sinners, which simply means that we have missed the mark. (Romans 3:23). Now, nobody likes being called a sinner. You probably think that you are a good person, and you probably are a good person. But it really doesn’t matter if you are a “good” sinner, or a “bad” sinner, the fact is that if you are alive, you have fallen short of God’s requirement to get into heaven, which is perfection, and you cannot achieve perfection on your own, no matter how hard you try or how many good works you do (Romans 3:10). The penalty for this sin is death, eternal separation from God (Romans 6:23). But God knew that we could not do it on our own, so He made a provision for us, He sent His Son, Jesus, to become a man, and walk on this earth. He lived the perfect life, and took our penalty for us; He voluntarily died in our place so that we could be with Him in heaven one day. His resurrection from the dead was the proof that His sacrifice was accepted by God. Now for our part, we have to believe and act on that belief. It is called faith. We have to agree with God that we are not perfect, but that Jesus paid for our sins on the cross. We ask Him to forgive us and accept the gift of salvation that Jesus has freely offered us. We repent, which means that we are sorry enough for the way we have lived to change the way we live. We trust that God is able to do what He promises, if we do what He asks us to do (Romans 10:9). We ask Him to come into our hearts and to help us to live how He would want us to live. We ask Him to clean up our lives; some of us have made quite a mess of it on our own. We do this by talking to God, it is called prayer, and you can do that anytime and anywhere. You can do it right now. It will be the wisest thing you have ever done.
What’s Next?
Well, if you did pray and ask Jesus to come into your life, then, REJOICE! You are now a new person, a new creature in Christ (Romans 10:9,10). Next, you need to get a hold of a Bible. And you need to read it. If you don’t have one, let me know, I’ll send you one for free. You also need to find a good church that will teach you what the Bible has to say about how to live. Make sure they are teaching about the Bible and not what man thinks. You have lived long enough doing what other men say is right. And when you do find a good church, ask them how you can be baptized and what that is all about. You could also let me know your good news, go to the contact page and write to me, I’d love to hear about it. You can also contact me if you have any questions about what I wrote, and thanks for letting me share my good news with you.
Pat Saia