Gospel
Taken from the message, Gospel, part of our series, Pillars.
The four values of GraceLife Church are Gospel, Community, Mission, and Family. We recently began a series to unpack these values and recenter around our vision as a church.
GOSPEL
“We believe the New Testament gospel is the center of life, fellowship, and spiritual growth. “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes…” Romans 1:16a (See also 1 Corinthians 15:3-6)”
The gospel is the foundation to the building, it is the structure for our lives, and it is the lens that we look at all other things through.
WHY THE GOSPEL?
To begin to understand the gospel, we need to see why we need the gospel.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:16
Let’s take a look at this word, “world.” The people in view with this word is the rebellious world of God’s image-bearers. Those who are sinful and broken. This is all of humanity. Not just a handful, but all, including you and I (Jn. 3:19; Ro. 3:23; 6:23; and Eph. 2:1).
After Adam sinned, God didn’t immediately send Jesus to save humanity. To sum up very quickly some history, following the fall God raises up for himself a nation through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Fast forward again and God gives the Law to Moses. God sends the Law, to a broken, sinful, and rebellious people. The Law is God’s moral measure, the command for good and right living, the just requirement to be perfect. The Law shows us the high standard of God and his holiness. Jesus shows us the high standard of the Law when he says this in the Sermon on the Mount.
You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Matthew 5:48
This is the ultimate demand of the Law. Not just have good motives, not just try not to be angry. Not just try to love. But be perfect. Our sinful, brokenness, needed to be proven to be insurmountable in our own efforts for redemption. We needed saving but we needed to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we could not save ourselves.
So again, why the gospel? Because we sinned and we cannot keep the Law. It tells us to be perfect as God is perfect and we are not. Something, someone, namely Jesus Christ is needed to heal our brokenness and forgive us our sin.
WHAT IS THE GOSPEL?
William Tyndale described the word translated as good news, we often say gospel, as “good, merry, glad and joyful news, that makes a man’s heart glad and makes him sing, dance and leap for joy.”
The gospel, the good news, is not like law, it is not a standard of living. It is not a command, it’s an announcement, declaring that Jesus has paid it all. It comes to us in our sin and says, here is rescue and life.
Whereas the Law is an imperative, the voice of command, do this or don’t do that. The good news is an indicative, declaring that what was required has been done. The good news is also more than words because ultimately it is a person, Jesus Christ, who is the Word of God. He is the ultimate revelation of God.
In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul describes the gospel as essentially the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. This is the good news. Jesus has died and risen again for the forgiveness of your sin. He died and rose again to bring you into relationship with God the Father. He died and rose again to give you eternal life. This is what we believe. This is what our trust is in.
To believe and trust what? What God’s news has said. The power of salvation is not in your belief, or your trust but rather the object of that trust. It's not your strength or resolve of faith, it’s what your faith is in.
WHAT DOES THE GOSPEL DO?
We don’t deserve God’s grace, but that’s what makes it grace, it’s a gift given to those who not only are undeserving but are actually ill-deserving. God’s grace is given to sinners, like you and I, changing us into his new creation, his beloved children, simply by believing the announcement of this good news. That Jesus has died and has risen to forgive you and I of our sin. This gospel, then shapes everything.
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
Romans 1:16-17
Here is the power for life, it’s the gospel. The good news of Jesus Christ.
As a church continually proclaims and believes the gospel and centers around the gospel, the culture of that church will be continually beautified as the bride of Christ. What will be shaped in our church is a gospel community, a gospel culture.
As we hear the gospel, as it washes over us time and time again, faith grows. Grace produces in us so many beautiful things, we call them the fruit of the Spirit. These fruits are out-going. Just as the Love of God overflowed to the point of sending the Son to die in our place so we, being fill with his spirit and love, begin to live in an intentional, outgoing way. Loving one another.