The gospel (longer).

The gospel, literally, is “good news.” It is a victorious accomplishment of the divine Maker and the display of His glorious character. It is the news of how God has affectionately reconciled men back to Himself. All the revelations of nature and Scripture can be seen as providences that inform and instruct men of its eternal truths. The good news itself is about the Lord Jesus Christ; not merely His work of reconciliation, but His very Person as well. The work of Christ in the gospel is wonderful for men because in it, God brings men to Himself.

The gospel’s backdrop.

To venture into what this precious reality is, we must start with God and who He is. God is spirit; infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, sovereignty, holiness, justice, goodness, truth, and every other attribute that is of noble quality. He is self-existent and fully sufficient in Himself for all things pertaining to His reality and happiness. The Creator is in every way transcendently above all things He has made, yet He is imminently involved and interested in all His creation. Also, God is triune; one God existing in three Persons. The three Persons of the Godhead (God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit) are the same in substance and eternality, and are equal in power, honor, and glory.

Mankind was formed in the Creator’s image. We were not brought into existence to display His nature (omnipotence, omnipresence, ability to speak things into being, etc.) but His character (His moral attributes such as love, righteousness, humility, gentleness, temperance, purity, etc.). God manufactured us in a manner which makes us able to communicate and fellowship so that, not only would we be vessels used to express great truths, but we would also be capable of experiencing those glorious virtues in communion with Him and with each other. Along with the purpose of displaying the character of the Lord (to be holy as He is holy), and along with knowing His incredible goodness, we are meant to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, minds, souls, and strength.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27)

And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, "Which commandment is the most important of all?" Jesus answered, "The most important is, 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' (Mark 12:28-30)

For I am the LORD your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. (Leviticus 11:44)

However, unlike every other created thing on this earth, we have failed in every facet of our duties. All men have sinned against the Holy One by not only living in contrast to His character, but also by spurning His glory and His company rather than loving and worshiping Him. At best, we have made God into something that we would rather Him be, and honored the figment of our imagination instead of the One who made and sustains us. We have not sought to serve Him and His renown, but have tried to use Him for our purposes as we endeavored to go about our lives. We have become altogether preoccupied with our own pleasures, delights, comforts, and reputations. And to add to our offence, our sin has also led to the decay of that which we were given watch over (the earth) and has defiled that which was made to communicate the beauty of our God (ourselves). Thus, we have severed our precious fellowship with the Lord of life.

What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written: "None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one." "Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive." "The venom of asps is under their lips." "Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness." "Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known." "There is no fear of God before their eyes." Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it--the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, (Romans 3:9-23)

The right and just personality of the Creator demands our punishment for setting ourselves at enmity with His face, His name, His goodness, and His splendor. We have all turned to fallen passions, selfish ambitions, and vain idols, and the King of glory should rightly bring down every curse upon us for the sake of His righteousness and for the groaning of all created things. Justice calls us to eternal torment in hell; not solely because we are so violent in our sinning, but because the One against whom we have transgressed is that great (i.e. a lie to one’s child doesn’t bring about as severe a verdict as a lie against the federal government, which brings about an infinitely less severe verdict than a lie against the transcendent Sovereign).

God is a righteous judge, and a God who feels indignation every day. If a man does not repent, God will whet his sword; he has bent and readied his bow; (Psalm 7:11-12)

But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed. He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality. (Romans 2:5-11)

The gospel’s content.

The Almighty ordained and allowed wickedness to exist and had it be the canvas on which He would paint His sacred love. There had to be a horrid backdrop, filled with relentless enemies, in order for there to be an environment capable of manifesting mercy, longsuffering, and grace. The splendor of forgiving love had no opportunity of being displayed or felt in a perfect heaven and uncorrupted creatures. So, with the heinousness of our sin, corruption, failure, and mutiny as the dark setting, into this world entered the Lord Jesus Christ, whom all the Jewish Law and prophets foretold. In a monumental act of pity, God took on humanity as He incarnated Himself, manifesting the fullness of His grace and truth to all mankind. It was ordained that the only way for man to be made right with God is if God came as a man and did it Himself. We could not appease the righteous God, so He came to appease Himself for us.

This Jesus, in His earthly life, perfectly fulfilled all the purposes of humanity in their fullest possibilities. Every thought, every word, every action, every motive, every affection of Jesus was fully pleasing to God the Father. There was not a fraction of a moment where He wasn’t loving the Lord God with all His heart, mind, soul, and strength. Then this pure, holy, and mighty God-man took our iniquity, with all its stench and shame, upon Himself, though never defiling His nature by Himself sinning. He was hung upon a Roman execution cross and was treated as the vilest of creatures by men and by God the Father. In one day of frightful justice, every curse that all His people incurred fell on Him, and in His full personhood He had all their sins blotted out. The Christ had to do this Himself, for the Father needed an almighty anvil on which He could strike His hammer of justice – an anvil that would not crumble beneath His blows before recompenses could be thoroughly administered. There could not be one grain of sin left over, not one ounce of wrath lingering. God the Father crushed God the Son so that He might pass over us sinners. The great King had Himself cast into His peoples’ demise in order to spare them. He took on our humanity in order to do away with our corrupted humanity.

"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” (Matthew 5:17)

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. (Hebrews 4:14-15)

But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned--every one--to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.

Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. (Isaiah 53:5-11)

In the death of Christ our “old man” was crucified, and in His resurrection we are born again as a “new man.” After this wiping away of the old, corrupted humanity that we inherited from Adam, Jesus Christ was buried for three days to declare that the old race He bore at His cross was dead and gone. The failures and shame we have lived out through the lineage of Adam has been killed off and covered beneath the earth. On the third day after His death, Jesus was resurrected as His human nature was brought back to life. Being the “second Adam” He consequently began a new race of humanity, what we can refer to as the eschatological humanity – the final and everlasting race that is made for the age to come.

Romans 5:12-21

So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. (1 Corinthians 15:42-49)

And this rising from the dead proves the penalty of our sin was fully paid for, because the wages of sin is death. Consider it this way: if you were charged with a crime and sentenced to ten years in prison, but a friend willingly decided to serve the jail time for you, when would you finally rest, assured that you have been acquitted? Would it not be when you see your good friend walking around in public after the ten year term? Likewise, the resurrection of Christ from the grave assures us that our crimes against the Creator were fully atoned.

And when they had carried out all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb. (Acts 13:29)

But God raised him from the dead, (Acts 13:30)

[He] was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. (Romans 4:25)

And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. (1 Corinthians 15:17)

After Jesus came to do what we failed to do, after He had our iniquity and offences wiped away for us, and after He was brought back to life so that men may too be quickened into a new life in a new, incorruptible humanity, He ascended back to the right hand of Majesty on High. He is said to be the firstfruits offering, sanctifying and ensuring the entire harvest of His renewed people. If He was resurrected, so will we be. If the Almighty accepts Him, He will accept all who are found in the lineage of Him. And, if God loves, adores, and has wonderful fellowship with Him, God will certainly have the same toward those who are born of Him through the gospel. The ascension of Jesus Christ proclaims that all the evil and calamity that men brought about in their rebellion was satisfactorily reversed by the Messiah when He incarnated Himself. It is this Jesus who has been given all authority in heaven and on earth. He also will judge the world. The One who loved His people beyond dispute by dying under the curse of God for them is the very same One whom those beloved people will stand before on the Day of Judgment.

He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. (Hebrews 1:3-4)

And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:8-11)

And, not only is our filth removed, but we have entered into a better relationship with the blessed Lord than we had in our originally created state because we have it on the basis of Jesus rather than ourselves. This gospel surely manifests God’s love toward rebellious creatures – He works out mercy (not receiving what one deserves) through forgiveness and justification (being made righteous in God’s eyes), and grace (receiving what one has not earned) through every blessing in the heavenly realm as we enjoy fellowship with Him again. In love and joy, the Lord has taken defiled beings and made them heirs of the grandest inheritance. It is a most marvelous display of invisible glory. He (by His own initiative, passion, and power) took His enemies and made them children, heirs of His glorious storehouses. God has taken the vilest of all creatures and joyously washed them and clothed them with beauty and immortality. This surely is a side of love that the guiltless angels in heaven do not know.

The gospel’s application.

Not every man, however, has been fitted for the experience of this gospel. Many, to the proclamation of God’s righteousness and power, will be the recipients of His wrath in everlasting agony. Every person has to reckon with the living God and give an account as to why they should be used by Him for the manifestation of His mercy and grace rather than for the display of His justice. What will be your plea before the throne of the holy Creator? Why do you think He should be obliged to have you benefit from His good news?

Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory-- (Romans 9:21-23)

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. (2 Corinthians 5:10)

How is this gospel administered to us? How does it become good news to the sinner who does not yet know God? How does one obtain the reconciling work of Jesus Christ? The accomplishment of Christ to settle the enmity between God and men is certainly a wonderful thing, but only so if one becomes a recipient and partaker of this reality.

It is not by any merits of our own that this occurs, for God is much too holy and good to consider any of our efforts (even efforts done out of our “purest” motives) as sufficient enough to gain His favor. We can do nothing, no matter how big or how small, to appease Him. Christ came and did everything for us because we could, and would, not. From beginning to end, salvation is of the Lord; and He will share that honor with no other. He will receive the full credit in our redemption. Consequently, we do not do our best “and let Jesus take care of the rest.” Nothing from us will have any causality in our being made right in the Lord’s eyes.

What, then, should we make our case to be in the courts of Majesty on High? Since there is nothing in us, in our life, in our history, or in our future that would commend ourselves to Him, we must trust in the works and merits of someone else: Jesus Christ. If a man is to have any hope, it is imperative for him to abandon every trust in his own deeds and religious activities. He needs to turn from the sin which he, by God’s grace, has begun to abhor. This turning from self and sin is what is called repentance (to repent is to turn). And what we are to turn towards is the One we have put our faith in – the One we have, by God’s grace, begun to trust and adore and treasure. Faith needs to believe that Jesus is who He says He is and that He truly did the work of the gospel. As well, faith needs to believe in (or trust in) Christ and His sufficient atonement on the cross. Repentance and faith is a twofold act of worship in which a man’s mind, will, and emotion are all engaged (in some measure or degree).

though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith-- (Philippians 3:4-9)

Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, (Acts 3:19-20)

The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, (Acts 17:30)

But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. (Galatians 3:22)

And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, (Romans 4:5)

The act of worship (repentance and faith) in this converting experience is the first such impulse of devotion the (now new) person partakes in. God has forever united him (or her; “he” is used in this article for brevity) with Christ Jesus and ever considers Christ’s righteousness as that person’s very own righteousness. The forgiven sinner now, by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit of God, begins to functionally become what he was created (and recreated) for – a creature that loves the Lord his God with all his heart, mind, soul, and strength, and who begins to become holy as He is holy. Christians, though perfect in the sight of God, never reach perfection in their lifestyle until after death. However, they now are fulfilling what they were originally decreed to display – what the image and character of God look like (in some degree). Although Jesus Christ was the only man who truly and fully displayed that wondrous character, Christians have the privilege of testifying to God’s glory by being conformed into the image of Christ and becoming like Him in His life and sufferings.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. (2 Corinthians 5:17)

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. (Titus 2:11-14)

Your response.

Do you know the reality of the gospel of Jesus Christ? If it has not changed your way of thinking, feeling, and living, then I assure you that you do not know it. If you do not have love toward the Christ which this news is about, then I can say that (as of yet) you will feel the wrath which those who spurn the God and His Messiah experience. But, if you do see the lack of your own goodness before a holy God, and if you know the filth of your own iniquity against Him, then call out to Him for mercy. Christ came to save sinners such as you. You are ready to display the wonder of God’s invisible splendor and to receive His forgiving love – a love only vile and dirty people can know. God can, and does, love that which is unlovable. Boldly ask Him to manifest His excellence to the surrounding world through you! Boldly plead with Him to give you the very things He delights to give – mercy and grace.

Do not look to your track record, unless you wish to gaze upon it as it is laid upon Jesus and His cross and watch it be wiped clean by the thorough hand of Justice. Do not despair in, and certainly do not trust in, whatever things you have or have not done throughout your life. Look to the life of Jesus Christ and how God the Father is well pleased with Him; and embrace the Savior’s life as yours. You have failed, and will continue to fail. Jesus didn’t, and He never will. See His love in all that He joyfully went through for you. Throw yourself upon Him! Oh, that you would have this experience of worshiping the living God through repentance and faith! He is your Maker – humbly cry out to Him and commune with Him.

John Kastamo