Brian Labosier © May 12, 2021

The Greek word for gospel found in the New Testament originally meant simply good news.  It was used in the ancient world to describe good news of any kind, such as a military victory or other fortuitous event.  But it soon became synonymous with the story of God’s plan of redemption through Jesus Christ, since this message is the best news humanity has ever received. 

However, history also reveals an endless number of other gospels that claim to meet humanity’s deepest needs.  Janie Cheaney recently observed in her World magazine article (07.18.20 issue, page 20) that the word gospel is now used to describe “any new thing that promises self-fulfillment.”  With popular definitions like this, the word gospel can mean virtually anything.  But ultimately there is only one true gospel, namely the good news revealed to us by God in His Word, the Bible, about His Son, Jesus Christ. 

• The natural outflow of God’s love for His creation.

• The means by which God is creating a people for Himself.

• The main theme of the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation.

• The most powerful, life-changing good news we will ever hear.

• Something that can transform us deep down inside, literally from the inside out.

• A reality that impacts our entire beings: minds, wills, and emotions—and usually in that order.

• The ultimate basis for our hope in God and a marvelous eternity in His presence.

• A clear and compelling motivation to worship God for His greatness and glory.

• A message relevant for both those who are not yet believers as well as those who already are.

• An invitation that always requires a response.

• A message that will either attract us or repel us.

• Something that will either be the best news we will ever hear—or the worst news.

As we survey the five core truths of the gospel listed below, we need to remember that each of these truths is essential and necessary.  We need to hear and understand each of these realities in order to come to saving faith in God and then to grow in that faith.  Whether we are accepting the gospel message for the first time or learning to live more consistently on the basis of the gospel for the rest of our earthly lives, we need to grasp at least something of each of these key gospel truths God has revealed to us. 

At the same time, we also need to remember that our faith in God isn’t an intellectual exercise where His blessings come only to the more intelligent or the better educated among us.  We can thank God for this.  God reaches out to all kinds of people and always accepts us wherever we are when we come to Him in faith.  If there is any pattern in how God works, He often seems to seek out the most unlikely people among us to be His children.  Paul reminds us of this reality in 1 Corinthians 1:26-29, “For consider your calling, brothers [and sisters]: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.  But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong…so that no human being might boast in the presence of God” (ESV here and hereafter).

Thankfully, we do not need to master every detail or concept in the Bible to know Him—or even those presented here in this outline of the gospel.  But we do need at least a child’s version of confidence in the greatness of God, a recognition of the reality of sin as an offense against God, an appreciation of the beauty and wonder of Christ, and an awareness of the importance of responding to Him in faith as our God and King.

We can summarize the gospel message in terms of five basic core truths: God, sin, Christ, grace, and glory.  Or we can expand these five truths by putting a little flesh on each point:

• The Supremacy of God

• The Offense of Sin

• The Beauty of Christ

• The Necessity of Grace

• The Hope of Glory

Let’s look at each of these.

1. The Supremacy of God:

God is the source of all things.  There should be no surprise here since the Bible is very clear about this.  But still this is the place to begin as we reflect on the gospel message.  Paul describes this reality of God’s role very succinctly in Romans 11:36, “For from him and through him and to him are all things.”  In other words, God is not only the source of all things, but He is also the One who sustains everything so that it continues to exist, and at the same time He is also their ultimate goal or purpose.  Paul appropriately concludes this verse with a call to worship God for who He is and everything He has done for us: “To him be glory forever.  Amen.”

The overall character of God:

In terms of God’s basic character, there are a number of basic things we need to know about Him that are foundational to the gospel message: (1) His absolute greatness, (2) His perfect holiness or moral purity, (3) His happy sovereignty, (4) His relational nature and  how He desires to relate personally with His people, and (5) His amazing love for His children, in spite of their resistance and rebellion against Him.

(1) His absolute greatness:  Sooner or later any thoughtful or reflective person is confronted with the reality of the greatness of God, especially as we witness such things as the beauty of the natural world around us or the awesome power of a storm or the waves crashing onto a rocky coastline.  Even something as insignificant as a common housefly has more engineering design built into it as a part of God’s creation than the best that human skill and technology can produce.  Paul reminds us in Romans 1:20 how everyone who has ever lived, regardless of where they live or how little they know about spiritual things, has already been exposed to God’s greatness simply through creation itself: “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.  So they are without excuse.”   What Paul means here by “his eternal power and divine nature” is simply God’s existence and greatness.  If we deny God’s presence, the problem is not with God or due to a lack of clarity in His self-revelation of Himself in creation, but on our side and simply due to the hardness of our own hearts.

(2) His perfect holiness: Holiness is a biblical term for God’s perfect and absolute moral purity.  God’s holiness is probably the most foreign of any of His attributes to us, and consequently, the least understood.  The Bible tells us God is a moral God, for whom right and wrong are far more important than they ever are for us.  Isaiah highlights this aspect of God’s nature in Isaiah 6:3 when he was confronted with a glimpse of God on His throne and responded, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth of full of his glory!”  In order to appreciate the wonder of Isaiah’s statement, we need to remember that repetition of words is often used in Scripture to catch our attention and highlight certain truths.  For example, in Luke 22:31 Jesus repeated Simon’s name to emphasize the seriousness of what he was going to say next: “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat.”  But there is only one concept that is found repeated a third time in Scripture, and it is the holiness of God: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth of full of his glory!” (Isaiah 6:3 and Revelation 4:8).  We dare not minimize the importance of this characteristic of God.

(3) His happy sovereignty: God is in full and complete control of this world—that is part of what it means for Him to be God.  The psalmist reminds us of God’s perfect control over the events in this world in Psalm 115:3, “Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases.”  David even goes so far as to tell us in Psalm 37:13, “the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he sees that his day is coming.”  God has sometimes been described as a happy God.  God is happy because He is sovereign and already knows that all His plans for this world will work out perfectly and exactly as He had planned.  Although we can grieve or sadden God (Ephesians 4:30), nothing ever upsets Him or catches Him by surprise.  His plans never go awry.  He never is forced to look suddenly for an alternative Plan B.  He is so much in absolute control of this present world that He can even promise us “that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).  His sovereign control of this world is part of what makes Him God—and it also makes Him a happy God.

(4) His relational or personal nature: God is a relational Being who has always existed in perfect relationship within Himself.  This is another reason why He is a happy God.  Theologians have often used the word Trinity to describe this intrapersonal nature of God—that is, the relationships that have always existed within the Godhead itself.  Unlike the strictly solitary, monotheistic god in religions such as Islam, the God of the Bible has always existed in perfect relationship within Himself as three separate Persons: God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ), and God the Holy Spirit.  There is a mystery here in the nature of God, but we don’t want to miss the significance of this reality even if He is beyond our understanding.  God is a relational Being who has always existed from eternity past as three distinct Persons who are in perfect fellowship with each other. Since God is fully sufficient in and of Himself, He has no unmet needs and is perfectly happy in and of Himself.  This happiness was true of God even before and apart from His creation.  God doesn’t need us to make Him happy or complete.  He is not in any way dependent upon us.  He is already happy and complete in Himself.

(5) His amazing love: Yet at the same time, God desires to share and expand His happiness for His own glory and good pleasure.  In other words, God wants to expand the love that has always flowed back and forth among the Father, Son, and Spirit to include His creation, especially human beings who are the one part of creation He has made in His own image and likeness (Genesis 1:26).  God created human beings, not out of necessity or any sense of need or incompleteness, but simply as an expansion of His love.  At the same time, God didn’t create people as robots who would mechanically love and respond back to Him.  He created us as individuals with minds, wills, and emotions, and who have the ability to think and make decisions, including whether they will love and trust to Him.  Again, there is a mystery here in the nature of God.  This time the mystery is how God can be both fully sovereign and yet allow human beings to exercise what we often popularly think of as free will, but the final solution involves a both-and answer and not an either-or one that violates God’s nature or what we know about ourselves as human beings.

God and some of His works:

There is much more that we could say about God, such as His work as Creator, Communicator, and coming Judge.  Both God’s act of creation and His desire to reveal Himself to us by communicating to us grow out of what He tells us about His character as a personal, loving, relational being.  If God created this world, there is no surprise that He would also reveal Himself to us through a variety of different means.  We should also not be surprised that if God reveals specific instructions for how we are to relate to Him in His Word, then there is every likelihood that God will hold us accountable for how we respond to Him as we live here in His world.

How God reveals Himself to us:

God has not left us in ignorance of who He is, but He has revealed Himself to us in a variety of ways so that we can come to know who He is and recognize His claims on our lives.  Since God works differently in each of us in this area of how He speaks to us, some the following evidences will be more persuasive to some and less so to others.  Here are some of the ways God reveals Himself to us:

We often catch glimpses of God’s power and greatness as we observe the beauty and wonder of the world God has created.  An abstract intellectual view of intelligent design may be a beginning point for some, but sooner or later we recognize the presence of an all-powerful cosmic Personality in this universe.  God cannot be explained as simply a Force or a Power—He is a Being with personality.  We are not here alone.  We are created in such a way that we are already hardwired for a personal relationship with our Creator.  In other words, the potential for a relationship with God is already built into each of us.  We can see this, for example, in how during times of great personal distress, most people instinctively cry out to God in prayer, whether they are believers or not.  The truth of the matter is that God has made us for Himself.  Augustine has famously summed up this reality in His Confessions: “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.”

The wonder of creation is reinforced when we consider how God has made us as human beings.  We can’t easily deny the reality of our own minds, wills, and emotions, and how these experiences inevitably point us back to the existence of a personal God who created us.  This area of our own personhood is at least part of what it means for us to be made in God’s image and likeness (Genesis 1:26).  God has made each of us and countless billions of other unique individuals, who—like our Creator—each possess innate and undeniable longings for:

• Beauty and creativity,

• Justice and a sense of right and wrong,

• Meaning and purpose in life,

• Proper relationships with our Creator and other people.

Each of these longings points us to the existence of a personal God who created us according to His own design and for His own purposes.

• Our own human consciences—as weak and faulty as they may often be—also point us to both the existence of God and how He has made us as moral beings.  Regardless of who we are, we each find ourselves possessing an innate sense of right and wrong and a natural desire for justice for ourselves and others around us.

• God’s providence is another way through which He shows His active hand in human history.  Many people have experienced near miraculous escapes from death or other tragedy through what may appear to us as seemingly coincidental events that are so significant, we can’t help wondering whether we are witnessing God’s hand in history.  Sooner or later, people come to see that God uses all the details of our lives and works them together for both His own glory and for the long-range well-being of His people.

• God’s most complete and fully sufficient revelation of Himself is found in His written Word, the Bible.  This inspired self-revelation of God in Scripture will always be our best and clearest means of learning about God and how we may come to know Him personally.  God has so designed His universe that virtually no one ever comes to faith in Him apart from being exposed to at least some portion of His Word in the Bible.  God’s Word is also equally essential for spiritual growth and maturity in the life of a believer.  It should not surprise us that a relationship with God virtually never takes place apart from His Word.

• God’s greatest revelation of Himself is found in the person of His own Son.  Jesus Christ is the incarnate Word, who took on human nature and lived and died as a human being two thousand years ago.  In Jesus, we discover “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his [God’s] nature” (Hebrews 1:3).  The centrality of Christ in Scripture also gives us guidance and direction as we try to understand the Bible.  When we are reading the Bible correctly, we should focus on looking for Christ: the Old Testament lays the foundation and helps prepare the way for understanding His coming; the four Gospels in the New Testament describe His actual coming to earth, His earthly ministry, and His death for us on the cross; and the rest of the New Testament unpacks the implications of His life and death.  Christ is the key to our experiencing new life, and the Bible is the primary means though which we encounter Christ.

Bottom line regarding the supremacy of God: Without a basic recognition of God’s greatness as Creator and King and how He has revealed glimpses of His glory to us in so many ways, especially through His Son and the Bible, we will not be able to make any further progress in understanding the good news of the gospel.  God’s existence and glorious greatness are the foundations on which all the other truths of the gospel rest.  And we need to remember we can come to know God only as He reveals Himself to us in His greatness and glory.

2. The Offense of Sin:

The offense of sin is one of the key foundation stones for understanding the gospel.  Yet many get lost here at the very beginning.  Having some view of God—especially if it is a vague and not very precise view of God—is easy enough for most people to accept.  And most people—but not all—are even willing to admit that they have failed or blown it somewhere along the way.  But realizing the offensive nature of sin is a step further along the process of spiritual insight.  The idea of sin being offensive naturally suggests there is someone or Someone who is offended by it.  It is possible for us to be displeased with ourselves every time we violate our own consciences and do things that we know are wrong or at least beneath us.  But this isn’t what we are talking about here.  Then too our sins often hurt and offend others around us—probably most often those nearest and dearest to us.  But again, this isn’t what we are talking about here either. 

For sin to be sin, we need to see it as an offense against a holy God.  This is why we can only understand the nature of sin if we first grasp something of the character of God, especially His holiness or moral purity.  Sin has three potential consequences: (1) we may feel upset with ourselves for our own sins and failures, especially if we find ourselves struggling with the same things over and over again, (2) most sins impact other people around us, either directly or indirectly, and often cause great suffering and hurt in other people’s lives around us, and (3) all sins are ultimately committed against the great God who has created us, placed us here in His world, and given us specific instructions how He wants us to live.  It is this third area of offense, offense against God Himself that is a key ingredient in the gospel message. 

One of the classic sins of all times was Old Testament King David’s sin of adultery when he violated Bathsheba and then arranged for her husband to be put to death in order to cover up his earlier sin of adultery.  If ever there was a sin that violated other people, this was that kind of sin.  Yet when David was confronted with his sin by the prophet Nathan, he responded in a prayer of confession to God in Psalm 51:4, “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.”

The problem most of us experience at this point is that we fail to understand how grievous and offensive our sins are to God.  We can so easily justify and rationalize our sins and try to attach all kinds of extenuating circumstances to our sins to get ourselves off the hook that we fail to see our sins for what they really are as offenses against a holy and perfect God.  Perhaps we should try to think of some of the things that we personally find most disgusting and repulsive, the things that make our own blood boil, the kinds of things that could potentially make us feel nauseated and sick, and then multiply these feelings a thousand times over, to begin to grasp something of how revolting sin is to God.  

Human beings are potentially the most contradictory beings God ever created.  There is something absolutely amazing and wonderful about people—and we can include ourselves here—and at the same time, sometime fallen, broken, and reprehensible.  Sometimes we see more of one side, and other times more of the other. 

There are two key components in what has traditionally been considered the doctrine of man: the preciousness of human life, and the problem of evil and brokenness.  Shortly after God’s original creation of man in His own “image” and “likeness” (Genesis 1:26) and in two genders as “male and female” (verse 27), He pronounced His creation of humanity as “very good” (verse 31).  Later, as the Psalmist reminds us, we are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14).  To this day, there is something special about each and every human being who has ever existed—even those who otherwise might appear to be the least deserving of our attention and respect.  After all, the image and likeness of God are found in each and every human being who has ever existed, making them all inherently precious simply in and of themselves as a part of God’s creation.

At the same time, we are equally confronted with the reality of the fallenness of humanity.  It is only too apparent that things in this present world are not as they should be.  We are all broken people living alongside other broken people in a broken world.  Historically, the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3 marks the beginning of the entrance of sin, evil, and brokenness into this world.  There is a tension here between the preciousness of human life and the tragedy of its brokenness.

The nature of sin:

We can come to terms with sin and evil only if we see how these realities function at a variety of different levels:

• Personal sin.  This is the simplest level where individuals make choices that are faulty and involve wrong responses.  This is something we all do.  Sin and evil first entered this world through the human choice of two historical individuals, Adam and Eve.  They made conscious choices to rebel against God and His ways.  To this day, their story serves as the paradigm for understanding sin.  Sin is always ultimately an act of questioning God’s instructions for us combined with deliberate rebellion and disobedience against the person of God.  Even though our sins may well impact other people, this Godward direction is always an essential component for understanding the nature of sin.   Personal sin is serious and can only be remedied through appropriate forgiveness and restoration.

• “Original” or inherited sin.  The focus here is on how we all have a natural bent or tendency toward sin.  In other words, there is also an inherited component to sin.  Philosophers such as John Locke and various psychologists down through history have assumed that every human being begins life morally neutral as a “blank slate” (tabula rasa in the Latin).  This is not what God teaches us.  The Bible tells us that ever since the fall of Adam and Eve, we have all inherited the effects of what we could call “original sin” as part of our DNA as fallen human beings giving us a natural bent or tendency to sin.  We do not begin life as innocent (despite what we might think when we see a newborn baby), but already spring-loaded to want our own selfish ways.  Thankfully, none of us are ever as bad as we can be, but like a defective bow and arrow set, sooner or later we inevitably go astray in our thought life, our emotions, and our actions.  The reality of original sin reminds us that the remedy for straightening out our lives lies beyond us—not only do we make wrong choices, but there is something deep down inside of us that tends to motivate us to make wrong choices.  Because of original sin, each of us are inherently and inevitably flawed in our minds, wills, and emotions.

• Corporate sin.  Sin and evil often have corporate components where they impact our relationships with other people around us.  We may sin individually and by ourselves, yet our choices almost always involve other people.  Our lives are interconnected with others around us: our sins impact them, and their sins impact us.  Sin and suffering often go together, and the reality of corporate sin reminds us that this suffering often extends far more broadly that the initial sins that triggered it.    

• Cosmic sin.  God also tells us that there is even a cosmic dimension to sin and evil in the sense that all of creation bears the result of the God’s curse on this world.  In other words, sin involves more than other people—it involves all of creation.  The effects of cosmic sin are far more serious and insidious than what environmentalists sometimes identify today as wrong with our world, such as global warming.  As the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3 plays out, we discover God’s curse for disobedience on His created world and how it involves “pain” and suffering, “thorns and thistles,” as well as “sweat” and all kinds of other difficulties.  The apostle Paul describes this cosmic brokenness in Romans 8:20-22 where he tells us how the whole creation is in “bondage” and “groaning together.”  The brokenness of this present world reminds us once again that sin is serious and that the solution for sin lies beyond us as human beings.

• The spiritual component of sin.  But most important of all, sin and evil have spiritual dimensions.  God is a moral God who in His innermost character is morally pure and holy.  At the same time, there are other fallen spiritual beings, headed up by Satan, pictured as the “serpent” in the Genesis 3 story of the fall, who focuses on sowing sin and rebellion against God.  The truth here is that there is more to this universe that the material world we see with our eyes—ultimately, we live in an inherently spiritual world where good and evil take on spiritual dimensions involving God and the forces of evil.  We soon discover that we are caught up as minor players in a spiritual warfare that is far bigger than we are.

Our accountability before God:

Recognizing God as the Creator and supreme Ruler of this universe inevitably brings us to the awareness that we owe God the love, allegiance, and obedience He deserves.  When we get a glimpse of God’s greatness and majesty, we are forced to recognize how different God is from us—not only in His absolute power and perfections, but also morally in terms of His perfect goodness, purity, and holiness.  Thus, any glimpses of God we might receive from His Word or the beauty of the created world around us inevitably creates problems for us and draws us up short.  Like the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, we each are driven to some form of his exclamation, “Woe is me! For I am lost;” (other translations of Isaiah 6:5 say “undone” or “doomed”).  Or we become like the Apostle Peter when he found himself in Christ’s presence and cried out, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8).  God’s presence always brings with it an awareness of our own desperate neediness.

Sin may be defined as anything that falls short of God’s perfect standards.  Sin is described in the Bible as including both sins of commission (things we have done wrong, such as disobeying His commandments) and sins of omission (when we failed to do the good things we should have done, like loving God and others).   If we don’t fail in one way, we discover to our own embarrassment and shame that we have failed in another.

Still another way of trying to come to terms with this reality of sin is to remind ourselves that we commit both mental sins as well as actual physical sins.  A quick reading of the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:1-17 might make us conclude that such things as adultery and murder are simply outward acts, and it is easy enough for most of us to think well of ourselves if we have not gone all the way and committed these sins.  But Jesus points out in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:22, 28) how such mental sins as being angry with another person or entertaining lustful thoughts toward them are in God’s eyes the moral equivalent of such sins as adultery or murder even if they have restrained themselves and not actually carried out their sinful desires with other people.

The universal nature of sin:

The Apostle Paul in Romans 3 helps us get a handle on our spiritual neediness and brokenness before a holy and perfect God when he reminds us of our true status before Him:

• “None is righteous, no, not one” (verse 10).

• “no one understands; no one seeks for God” (verse 11).

• “no one does good, not even one” (verse 12).

• “There is no fear of God before their eyes” (verse 18)

Paul wraps us this section by reminding us that sin is something we all do—everyone one of us—and it always involves our deliberate disrespect for God and falling short of His standards (verse 23).

Still another way to describe the seriousness and pervasive nature of sin is to begin with thinking about Christ’s two great commandments in Matthew 22:37-39:

• You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the great and first commandment.

• And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Loving God even occasionally with a small portion of our heart, soul, and mind sounds like a tall order.  But this is not what God is looking for.  He is looking for total and complete devotion to Him in every area of life.  And then to top it all off, we are to love other people—including all the difficult ones God often seems to bring into our lives—in the same way that we already love ourselves.  The more we reflect on God’s standards, the more we see how we have all rejected Him and His plans and purposes for our lives time and again and chosen to go our own way and do our own things—thus rejecting God, ignoring Him and disobeying Him.  And God takes these offenses against Him and His character far more seriously than we do.  And God is very clear that the day will come when “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).

Bottom line regarding the offense of sin: We need to recognize we are lost before we can ever be saved.  We need to admit our own brokenness before we can ever find healing from God.  Without a growing awareness of the depth of our own sinfulness and neediness before we will never be able to shift our eyes from a faulty preoccupation with ourselves and be able to begin to grasp something of our total dependence upon God for His help and grace.  Recognizing our own neediness is always one of the first steps in saving faith.  Then once we are a child of God, spiritual growth takes place only through a growing awareness of our own need of God and dependence on His grace.

3. The Beauty of Christ:

The person and work of Christ are the areas where the good news of the gospel comes most clearly into focus.  The two earlier core truths of the supremacy of God and of the offense of our sin were more foundational in nature.  In these earlier sections we first caught a glimpse of the greatness of God and then of the depth of our own need and brokenness.  But all that was simply laying the foundation for God’s good news.

Christ Himself is the heart of the gospel message.  Out of His love, God in His Triuneness has taken the initiative to provide a Mediator to restore us into a right relationship with Himself through the life, death, and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ.  The process by which God brings needy sinful human beings into a proper relationship with Himself naturally focuses on the second person in the Trinity since Christ is the primary actor and content of the gospel message.

Yet it is also important for us to recognize that God’s plan of redemption also involves the other two members of the Trinity.  The Bible clearly points us to the direct involvement of God the Father as the One who “so loved the world, that he gave his only Son,” as John 3:16 reminds us.  God the Father is usually associated in Scripture with initiating the entire plan of redemption.  Then too there is the equally essential work of the Holy Spirit in taking and applying the benefits of Christ to our individual lives.  The gospel is at its heart always a Trinitarian gospel.  But the focus of God’s plan of redemption remains on the person and work of Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.  Thus, it is good and proper for us to zero in on the unique person and work of Christ.

The beauty of the Lord Himself:

Jonathan Edwards regularly emphasized the sweetness, beauty, and excellence of Christ.  Here we need to ask ourselves what it is that makes someone beautiful in our eyes.  When we think about the whole topic of romance, we have probably all experienced the all-consuming attractiveness of another person who seems to us as the epitome of desirability.  These are the kinds of feelings we should have toward God.  The Psalmist David captures this for us in Psalm 27:4, when he writes, “One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple.”

This explains why one of the frequent themes throughout Scripture is how our relationship with God is comparable to the entire dating, engagement, and marriage experience at the human level.  Paul picks up this imagery in Ephesians 5:22-33 where he compares Christ as a heavenly bridegroom and His church as His bride to explain the human marital roles of husbands and wives.  The argument here is that God has given us the institution of marriage and romance to help us understand how God works in the lives of His people seeking them out, drawing them to Himself, and finally entering into a covenant relationship with them.  This imagery of dating and marriage helps us understand something of the beauty of Christ.

The beauty of Christ is an essential but acquired realization.  Isaiah reminds us that Christ as He came to us in human form so long ago had no unusual natural beauty in Isaiah 53:2, “For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.”  Certainly, his own brothers and sisters grew up with him, yet they never saw anything unusual or attractive about Him until after His death and resurrection.  Isaiah in the verse quoted above is picturing Christ specifically as a suffering servant at the time of His death when “his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the children of mankind” (Isaiah 53:2).

There is a common saying that “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”  Certainly, Christ has always been God the Father’s “beloved Son” and the One with whom He was “well pleased” (Matthew 3:17 and elsewhere).  There could be no higher commendation than this.  We are also told in Scripture that the day will come when “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 2:10-11).  But here in this present sin-swept world where we do not see things clearly, the beauty and absolute attractiveness of Christ are seen only as God opens our eyes through faith.

Key aspects of Christ and His ministry for us: 

• Christ lived a perfect life in our place.  He was tempted in every way as we are, “yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).  Because of Christ’s obedience, we too can be clothed in Christ’s righteousness as His people, so that when God the Father looks at us, He sees us clothed in Christ’s righteousness.  In other words, God sees us in the same way that He sees His own Son. The important thing to notice here is that the believer receives not only pardon for sins we have committed (through Christ’s substitutionary death on the cross—see below) but is also credited with perfect righteousness through Christ’s active obedience (during His earthly life).   Christ’s own personal obedience during His earthly life is foundational to all the blessings we receive from Him as His people.

• Christ took the penalty for all our sins before a holy God upon Himself and died in our place paying the price of the due penalty for all our sins, past, present, and future (Isaiah 53:5; John 1:29; 1 Peter 2:24).  His atoning death makes it possible for us to enter into the presence of a holy and perfect God.  God was able to take the weight of all our feelings of guilt and regret for our sins, combine these with His own proper wrath against sin, distill them down, and place them all upon His Son in six hours of unparalleled intense suffering on the cross of Calvary.  Christ is thus the one and only perfect Sacrifice for His people, making peace for us with God in all His Triuneness.  Christ does for us what we could never do for ourselves.

• Christ rose from the dead that first Easter demonstrating both that He successfully paid the penalty for our sins and how He is now a risen Savior.  His resurrection also marks how He was able to begin undoing all the effects of the curse on humanity dating back to mankind’s first act of disobedience in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3.  Christ’s resurrection marks the turning of the tide when the effects of sin and the curse on creation begin to recede.

• Christ ascended into heaven from where he continues to pray and intercede for all “those who draw near to God” in faith (Hebrews 7:25).  This ministry of intercession for us is a continuation of His priestly work as our Savior where Christ continues to pray for believers before the Father’s throne in glory.

• Christ presently indwells believers through the Spirit (see such verses as 2 Corinthians 13:5), so that He is able to give us His power and victory in every situation in which we might find ourselves.  Living out the Christian life is an outgrowth of Christ’s presence dwelling in us through His Spirit.

• Christ promises to return at the proper time, judge this world, and establish a new heaven and new earth where He will complete His perfect plan of an eternity in His presence.  He promises us that at that time He will even “wipe away every tear from [our] eyes” (Revelation 21:4).  There will be no more sadness or grief, but sheer joy in the presence of our God who has created us and redeemed us.

Jesus Christ is both the primary content of this good news and He is also the primary actor who brings it about.  Thus, Jesus is not only a historical figure, He is also God at work in this world today creating a people for Himself through the preaching and teaching of the gospel.

A most amazing plan:

The gospel demonstrates to us how God has devised the most amazing plan by which He both preserves His own holiness and integrity, while at the same time, providing a way to forgive our sins and give us new life.  Ignoring sin is not an option for God, and paying the penalty of our own sin is not possible for us—short of spending an eternity suffering in hell ourselves.  But God has done something we could never do ourselves by paying the penalty of sin Himself.  No wonder God is often described as a God of love.  John 3:16, arguably the best-known verse in the Bible, sums up this truth for us: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

We should never grow weary of hearing this part of the gospel message or fail to marvel at the wonder of God’s solution for our need.  The apostle Paul cryptically describes the gospel as a plan which allows God both to “be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26).   In other words, God is just or truthful and upright in not simply ignoring sin and disobedience by pretending these offenses never happened.  At the same time, He is also the justifier in the sense that He is God in His Triuneness who has devised a most amazing strategy for dealing with our sins against Him by paying the penalty Himself.  Who would have ever thought of such a plan?  And one that was so costly to Himself?  The apostle Peter describes this part of the gospel as something “into which angels long to look” (1 Peter 1:12).  There is a wonder and a beauty here in God’s plan for atoning for (literally covering over) our sins against Him, and especially in the person and work of Jesus Christ.  We don’t want to miss the amazing nature of the gospel.

Looking ahead:

But all the blessings associated with Christ and the gospel message become ours only if we are connected up with Him by faith.  There is an additional step in this process involving what is sometimes described as our coming into a “union” or a relationship with Christ.  Like a proverbial electric light, we need to be properly plugged into the source of power before the light will turn on.  This union with Christ simply means we need to be connected up with Christ by faith before these benefits will be ours.  Or to change the analogy, entering into a relationship with Jesus Christ is like entering into a marriage where all our liabilities and resources are shared.  In this case our liabilities (our sins and failures) are placed on Christ and all His blessings (His perfect righteousness) become ours.  But this is the topic of the final two sections of the gospel message.

Bottom line regarding the beauty of Christ: Without at least a growing awareness of the beauty and necessity of Christ’s life and death for us, we will never be able to make any further progress in understanding the good news of the gospel.  Christ is the key, and without Him we are without hope.  A desire to worship God the Father (for sending His Son), Christ (for His willingness to come and secure our salvation at such a cost to Himself), and a dependence on the Holy Spirit (for His transforming power) always go hand in hand with a growing recognition of the beauty and wonder of the gospel.  Without a response of love for God and Christ and a desire to worship them, we haven’t progressed very far in understanding the gospel.

4. The Necessity of Grace:

The topic of grace seems strange to many and almost un-American.  Grace suggests dependence upon another for their goodwill and generosity.  But this is not where most people are.  Some of a child’s first words are “me,” “myself,” and “I.”  And many of us never get too far beyond this self-centered perspective on life.  Traditionally our country has been founded on a spirit of independence and a feeling that we can and should “pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps.”  Even our economic system of capitalism is built, in part at least, on the natural human desire to make their own way in life.  The problem with this approach is that it is the direct opposite of the gospel message of dependence on God.

God’s grace shows itself in many ways.  Grace is sometimes defined as if it were an acronym: GRACE = God’s Riches at Christ’s expense.  There is a certain helpfulness in this definition, especially in the sense that grace is a gift from God that flows out of Christ and all that He did for us.  The concept of God’s grace also reminds us that everything we receive in the gospel is a gift from God and nothing we can ever earn or deserve through our own actions or human efforts.

Yet at the same time we also want to give proper attention to God in His Triuneness and the Trinitarian nature of the Gospel.  The final benediction in 2 Corinthians is helpful here in reminding us of the work of the various members of the Trinity: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Corinthians 13:14).  Grace is particularly associated with Christ, love with God the Father, and fellowship (or connecting up in partnership) with the Holy Spirit.  In other words, God the Father has a key role in planning our salvation out of His love for us, God the Son in accomplishing our salvation through His death on the cross, and the Holy Spirit in applying the benefits secured by Christ to us as human beings.  The gospel is thus both always Trinitarian and at the same time Christ-centered.

Grace as the opposite of works:

The concept of grace is focused especially on how we become connected up with the blessings of Christ.  Grace is most naturally contrasted with works.  As human beings we inevitably fall into the mistaken assumption that we can somehow please God and thus merit His salvation through our own human efforts.  Paul shows us the error of this faulty thinking in Ephesians 2:8-9, “For 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.”  Paul also picks up this contrast of grace and works in Romans 11:6, “But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.” 

God knows that the futility of our own human efforts.  The Old Testament Isaiah described how our best human deeds—or what we think of as “righteous deeds”—are really “like a polluted garment” before God (Isaiah 64:6—the King James Version expresses it as “filthy rags”).   As far as God is concerned the reason why people are not saved by their “good deeds” is not that they don’t have enough good deeds stored up: the reason is that they don’t have any good deeds that meet His perfect standards.

Salvation is either all by grace, or it never comes at all.  Yet this concept of grace goes directly against our own human nature.  Our natural human tendency ever since the fall of Adam and Eve has been to try to pull things off using our own human energy in order to maintain our own independence and pride.  The gospel teaches us very clearly that we can never earn or deserve His forgiveness by our own human efforts.  Our only hope is for us to take the gospel at face value, humble ourselves, and simply accept what God has already done for us through Christ.

When we are trying to base our salvation on our own human efforts, what we are really saying is that we don’t think Christ is enough for us and that we need to supplement His efforts with our own personal efforts.  In other words, if we are working for it, it isn’t grace; and if we receive salvation by grace, we are simply receiving His blessings as gracious gifts to us.

It can be only one way or another: either Christ saves us—or we try to save ourselves.  The moment we try to earn our own salvation by trying to please God through our own human efforts and what we think are good deeds, we are really rejecting Christ and the sufficiency of His life and death for us.  If we could make it into a relationship with God through our own human efforts, Christ never would have needed to leave the riches of glory, come to this earth, and die a horrendous death on the cross.  It is because there is no other way that Christ came. 

The gospel always involves an invitation and requires a response:

The gospel of Jesus Christ always creates a reaction everywhere it is heard.  We either catch a positive glimpse of the beauty and wonder of God’s plan of salvation and are attracted to it, or we choose to resist it and reject it in what the Bible sometimes speaks of as hardening one’s heart.  The one thing we can’t do is to ignore it.  There will always be a response: the question is always what kind of a response?

God’s Word is crystal clear: the invitation has gone out.  We find almost countless examples of His invitation in Scripture.  Here is how Jesus invited people in His day in Matthew 11:28-29, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” God is presently calling men and women, boys and girls, people of all ages, and people from every possible background and language and ethnicity into a relationship with Himself.  This call has gone out in one form or another in every period of human history and it has now gone out in virtually every nation and people group around the world—and it continues to go out today.  The biblical principle here is whosoever will may come (John 6:37).  

God often uses the imagery of an engagement or marriage to describe how He pursues a relationship with His people.  Things like engagements and marriages always begin with an invitation and then require a decision.   Only in our relationship with God, it is a choice whether to accept or reject the most serious and life-changing invitation we will ever receive in life.  We can’t waffle or try to go both ways.  An answer is required.  Ultimately the answer has to be either “yes” or “no.” 

But accepting or rejecting the gospel God is offering us is more complicated than a marriage proposal or any other human decision we might make.  God also tells us that none of us naturally seek God on our own.  We need His help even in this—and especially in this.  Jesus said, “no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father” (John 6:65).  But the one thing we can do is to pray and cry out to God for His forgiveness and His grace.  Salvation is not like a business arrangement we might make with another human being; it is always a gracious gift extended by God that can only be received by faith.  There is a mystery here in how God works in drawing people to Himself and yet holds us responsible for the choices we make.  But we can, like the blind and sick in the Gospel narratives, go to Jesus and ask Him to open our eyes to see the spiritual truths in the gospel message and bring healing to our broken lives through the gospel of His Son.

Faith is simply another name for how we receive the benefits of Christ, by grace.  Perhaps we can try to distinguish grace as a work of God being poured out on us and faith is our response of holding up empty hands to receive God’s blessings.  But even here our human reasoning fails us.  The moment we start thinking of faith as a work we do to earn or deserve God’s grace, we have already veered back into trying to earn our salvation through our own human works, where faith becomes simply a work in disguise.  We previously looked at Ephesians 2:8-9, “For 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.”  Only now we need to ask ourselves what is the antecedent of the little pronoun “it” in the phrase, “it is the gift of God.”  The original Greek is not as clear as we might hope at this point, but the most likely way of interpreting this phrase is to see the “it” as referring back to God’s entire plan of salvation including the gift of faith, as a gift from God Himself.  So we discover that even the ability to believe in Christ through faith comes to us as a gift from God.  Certainly, this interpretation meshes with our earlier discussion of the sovereignty of God and how He controls everything including the election of the elect.  God is first, last, and always, the One choosing and calling a people to Himself.  Yet at the same time, we don’t want to lose sight of the fact that there is also a component of human response in this act of faith as we grab onto the promises of God and make them ours.

Bottom line for the necessity of grace:  Hearing the gospel is always serious business.  We are never the same after hearing it.  There is a popular saying that the same sun that melts ice hardens clay.  This gospel can be the best possible news in the world—the God who created us wants to walk through all of life with us here in this present world as well as in a future perfect world for all eternity.  Or the gospel can be a word of judgment to those who reject Him and chose to go their own ways.  The choice is ours.  How will you decide?  For God—or against Him? 

5. The Hope of Glory:

Glorifying God is part of His universal call on all of His created beings.  The Westminster Shorter Catechism memorably captures this truth in its well-known first question and answer: What is the chief end of man?  Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.”  Biblical support for this principle is easy to find.  The Psalmist in Psalm 29:2 exhorts us to, “Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness.”  Psalm 96:7-8 offers similar instructions, “Ascribe to the LORD, O families of the peoples, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength!  Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; bring an offering, and come into his courts!”  Then in the New Testament Paul tells us this same truth in 1 Corinthians 10:31, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” 

The underlying problem here, and thus the need for these commands, is that ever since the fall of Adam and Eve, humanity has been predisposed to focus on their own glory.  This is why the Psalmist is Psalm 115:1 reminds us, “Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness!”

God’s glory naturally flows out of the previous topic of His grace.  God’s grace reveals His glory.  Paul reminds us in 2 Corinthians 4:15 how there is an inevitable connection in Scripture between God’s grace and His glory: “as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.”  His grace is always designed to glorify Him as we see Him in new and fresh ways.

But then this topic of God’s glory is also broader than the theme of God’s grace.  God’s glory is intimately related to all the other previous sections in this outline of the gospel.  We glorify God as we focus on His supremacy, on our need of His help as fallen sinful beings, on the perfect solution He has provided in the person of His Son Jesus, as well as on the realization of our total dependence on His grace in securing all the blessings He is ready to pour out on His people.

Yet God’s grace even when it is coupled with faith isn’t the end of the gospel.  The gospel message doesn’t end with us or our response.  The gospel involves the beginning of a new and transformed life—a new life that will last for eternity.  We as believers begin to experience this new life here in the present life, but the full manifestation of this transformation takes place only in eternity.  This is what the Bible speaks about as eternal life—or literally life of the ages (implying life of the future age).  It is also what Paul speaks about in terms of a new creation in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”  Theologians have sometimes used the language of already/not yet to describe this tension between a present reality and a final future fulfillment.

This idea of a transformed life is a process that takes place in stages.  There needs to be a beginning.  This is what is sometimes described as new life or being born again.  But the goal of the gospel is not bringing a number of people to being spiritual infants.  Rather the goal is to “present everyone mature in Christ” (Colossians 1:28)—and this takes place only through a discipleship program where Christ is “proclaim[ed].”  And as Paul goes on to tell us in this same verse, spiritual growth also takes place only through “warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom.”  The gospel invites people into a new relationship with God, but then it also encourages them to grow in their walk with God, and finally it looks ahead to the time when God will complete this process in glory.

The phrase the hope of glory inevitably points us ahead into the future when we will be able to see and experience things in ways that we can’t currently see or experience them.  Paul describes this reality this way in 1 Corinthians 13:12, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”

God tells us that history is going somewhere.  There is more to life than anything we have seen or even imagined so far.  Life has a destination.  It is God and His glory.  Thus, there is meaning and purpose to life.  We can’t understand what is happening in the world around us by watching the news on the internet or through Facebook or Twitter.  God tells us that the most important news of the day is what He is currently doing in this world He has created and even more so, what He will do in the future when Christ returns and establishes God’s eternal kingdom.  Ultimately God is the one who has plans and purposes for this world, and since He is God, His plans and purposes count in ways that ours don’t.

This focus on the goal or purpose of God reminds us that there is more to the gospel message than simply a ticket to heaven—as if we were buying a life insurance policy we secretly hope we will never need. God is at work changing people’s lives.  The gospel message inevitably transforms people.  Sometimes He works slowly, but new birth always shows itself in new life.  The gospel is the means through which God is at work in this world for His own glory preparing a people for Himself where He will be their God and they will be His people.

Four aspects of God’s glory:

God’s glory is partly about Him and partly about those of us who are His people who enter into His glory. 

(1) God’s glory is first and foremost about Him.  Glory is ultimately always associated with God Himself.  It is one of His attributes or character qualities, both in terms of who He is a Person and what He is doing in terms of His works.  God’s glory is simply another way of looking at His greatness and splendor—and as such it is part of His eternal nature.  God has always been glorious and always will be glorious.  This is simply a given. 

His glory is overwhelming and overpowering to us as human beings.  The prophet Ezekiel describes a time when he glimpsed part of the brightness of the glory of the LORD in Ezekiel 1:28: his immediate response was to fall on his face before God.  Left to ourselves, we would be totally overcome by a glimpse of God’s splendor.  It is only when we are born again and in the process of being transformed by God’s power that we can enter His presence and live.

(2) God has made it possible for us to glorify Him.  It is hard for us to imagine how we as finite sinful human beings could ever glorify God or make Him more glorious than He already is.  Yet there is a way through which we can glorify God, and it comes through the gospel. 

So yes, we can glorify God.  We can glorify God through our worship of Him for His greatness and supremacy.  We can glorify God through admitting our fallenness and sinfulness and own up to how our lives often offend Him.  We can glorify God only through glimpsing the beauty and wonder of His perfect solution for our deepest needs in His own Son Jesus.  We can glorify God only by coming to Him with empty hands and accepting His grace and kindness through Jesus.  In other words, we can glorify God only through accepting the gospel message and making it ours. 

But then God also calls us to continue to live out the gospel message through our ongoing worship, faith, and obedience.  The old hymn “Trust and Obey” captures this twofold balance between ongoing faith and ongoing obedience.  The gospel inevitably leads us to transformed lives—or better yet lives that are still in the process of being transformed during the remainder of our earthly lives.

Amazingly we can even glorify God right here in this present broken world.  Even as believers, we still live in a broken world where we still experience sin and shame and all kinds of sufferings as our constant companions.  We still struggle, and yet it is even through these struggles to live lives of faith in a broken world that we have special opportunities to glorify God.  We are still in process.  When we first become a believer, we are immediately freed from the penalty of sin, but we still wrestle with the power of sin for the rest of our earthly lives, and we only experience freedom from the presence of sin in the life to come.  This is why Paul tells us to “consider [or reckon in the King James] yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:11).  It is through the exercise of our faith that we glorify God. 

Our ability to glorify God in this way of exercising our faith in Him only because we live in a broken world.  Actually, it is our dependence on Him that glorifies Him.  So our ability to glorify God in this present world is based in part at least on the fact that we live in a broken world where we have countless opportunities to exercise faith in God.

(3) God’s glory helps us glorify Him.  Our ability to live lives of faith in God is strengthened and sustained by the glory of God.  We are transformed by God’s glory through the gospel for the sake or purpose of God’s glory.  God’s glory is a special encouragement and incentive to live lives that please God—and thus, glorify Him.  In 1952, J.B. Phillips wrote the classic book, Your God is Too Small, reminding us of the importance of having a right view of God.  A focus on God’s glory helps us remember the greatness and majesty of God and how He is worthy of all of our love, devotion, and obedience. 

We can look at this same truth from another perspective and focus on the theme of hope.  This phrase “hope of glory” is found only one time in Scripture, namely in Colossians 1:27, where it is paired with the “mystery” of “Christ in you.”  God’s glory and greatness give us hope right here in this present world.  The greatness and glory of God is the fuel that empowers our Christian lives.  And it comes only through the presence of Christ living inside us through the gospel.

(4) God invites His people to share in His glory.  Perhaps this is the most amazing reality we will ever experience: God is willing and eager to share His glory with His people.  Sometimes people make the mistake of thinking that the key characteristic of eternal or everlasting life is its length—that it will last for all eternity.  That is true, but the most important characteristic is the amazing quality of this new life.  It will be a little like what Adam and Eve experienced in the Garden of Eden prior to the Fall in Genesis 3—only it will be far better.  It will be better than anything any of us have ever imagined. 

What kinds of blessings should we anticipate?  Occasionally one hears conversations about who will be the first person they want to see after they die and they arrive in the glories of heaven.  Usually the answers revolve around various friends and family members.  Strangely enough, one name that is only rarely mentioned is that of our Lord Jesus Christ, who made this new live possible for us in the first place.  Of anyone, He should be at the top of our list.  Nothing will be better than seeing Christ in His glory.

Another future blessing we can look forward to is that God will finally complete the process of transforming His people into all that He created them to be.  Theologians have sometimes described this process as glorification.  This takes place at the end of time, after Jesus’ returns, when He forever removes any taint of sin that still remains in us.  Theologians sometimes describe the process of spiritual growth that begins at the time of our conversion and lasts until God calls us home as sanctification.  But sanctification even under the best of circumstances takes us only so far.  God will complete His work of transformation of His people only after Christ’s return when we experience glorification when God makes all things new—including us.

But still there is more.  The final two chapters of the Book of Revelation describe the glories of New Jerusalem, which is part of a new and transformed earth surrounded by a new heaven.  But the greatest blessing of all will be that we as believers will be forever in God’s presence and have direct and immediate access to Him.  The Apostle John tells us that there will be no temple in the New Jerusalem, because “its temple is [direct access to] the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb” (Revelation 21:22). 

Bottom line for the hope of glory: God is glorified by our taking Him at His Word, our depending on Him for everything in life, and our worship of Him.  We can assess where we are in this area of the hope of glory by considering how we are doing in these areas of obedience, trust, and worship.  Is God and Christ the most important realities in our lives?

May this hope of God’s glory continue to transform us all.  And may our prayer be that of the concluding verse of the Bible: “Come, Lord Jesus!” (Revelation 22:20).