About​

The gospel is both good and bad news. The bad news is the condemned state of the sinner. The good news is the deity, death, and resurrection of God the Son, Jesus the Christ. But even the bad news is part of the good news. Being a Christian means one has repented and believed the gospel.

The gospel begins with the sovereignty of God. The scripture speaks of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit being the sovereign Creator of all things (Genesis 1:1-2, Colossians 1:16). He works all things according to the counsel of his will (Ephesians 1:11).

God is holy (Isaiah 6:3). He cannot commit nor condone sin (James 1:13). 1 Peter 1:16 commands us to be holy because God is holy.

The scariest part of the gospel is that God is holy. This is terrifying because we are not holy and without holiness, no one will see God. While Adam was created perfect in the Garden of Eden, Adam sinned. For this reason, all of mankind exists in a fallen state and is spiritually dead in sin (Romans 5:12). We are capable of moral acts, but we are incapable of knowing, loving, or desiring God on our own (Romans 3:10-12).

Worse, God demands justice (Ezekiel 18:4, Romans 6:23). There is no free lunch. Our sins must be paid for. God’s righteous wrath must be satisfied. Thankfully, Jesus Christ became our kinsman redeemer by being born fully man and yet fully God, living a perfect and sinless life thus fulfilling the covenant of works that Adam had failed to keep in the Garden. He was crucified and slain by wicked men and rose victorious over death, hell, and the grave on the third day.

Romans 10:9 says that if one confesses with his mouth Jesus as Lord and believes in his heart that God has raised Christ from the dead, he will be saved. Christ has satisfied the righteous wrath of God for all who will repent of their sins and call upon Christ by faith. For everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord, Christ has taken our sin upon himself and has imputed his righteousness to us. Therefore, believers are forgiven and justified by grace through faith in Jesus the Christ.

Repentance is not a work of man. Repentance is part of the work of God whereby a sinner begins to hate the sin that he once loved and begins to love the God that he once hated. Jeremiah 8:6 perfectly describes the nature of repentance in describing the people’s refusal to regret their evil by asking, “What have I done?”

The result of saving faith, will be continual repentance and faith. A true believer will not continue in sin. While we may stumble and fall, a believer who has repented and believed unto salvation will continue repenting and believing. Those who are saved by Christ submit to his Lordship. When Christ saves a person, he establishes himself as Lord in their lives. Submission to Christ as Lord and obedience to his scripture is evidence of salvation (Ephesians 2:10).