Gospel 201: A Review of the Basics

Many Christians who sit in a church on a Sunday morning can say that they have already found the answer to the question What Is the Gospel? They have understood the saving grace of God in the cross of Christ, have taken hold of Christ by faith, and now find themselves in Christ, clothed in His righteousness, adopted as children of the Father, and walking in the Spirit’s power. In other words, at a particular moment in time, they were born again.

Yet while the Gospel may be the beginning of the Christian life, it is not simply an initiation. No, it is a fundamental principle to which we return again and again, not because we must be saved again but because our standing with God and our hope of redemption, once established, remains forever founded on that work of Jesus for us.

So, even for those who have been saved and experience assurance of their place in God’s family, a ministry of reminder is necessary. We need to remember the essential truths of our faith. And we may do so by considering the Gospel’s source, its substance, its scope, and its ongoing significance.

The Source of the Gospel

Throughout Scripture, the Gospel is described specifically to be “the gospel of God” (e.g., Mark 1:14; Rom. 1:1; 1 Thess. 2:2; 1 Peter 4:17). In other words, the good news of Jesus is not a manmade contrivance, but it is a divine revelation. It begins with God Himself.

In Galatians 1:11, Paul writes, “I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel”—or, as J. B. Phillips paraphrases it, “no human invention.” The Gospel ministry of Paul and his fellow apostles was not a matter of calling people to listen to what they had to say. It emerged from their responsibility to proclaim the message God had entrusted to them.

When we proclaim the Gospel, we’re proclaiming God’s message on His behalf. We’re saying to humanity that the God who made them in His image has presented, in His Son, the only means whereby they may find salvation and meaning.

Because Christ has taken the punishment for sin, God pardons those who believe in Him.

And this Gospel is not a contingency plan. It’s not as if God had one bad go with Adam, and then another with the law, and now He’s trying it another way with Jesus. God didn’t send His Son to fix His own mistake. No, the Gospel has been His eternal purpose since before the world’s creation (Eph. 3:11). Long before Jesus was born in the stable in Bethlehem, God was unfolding His eternal purpose. Peter tells us that the prophets and even the angels knew that something was coming, but they didn’t yet know it in its fullness; they longed to see it because they knew that it had its origin in God’s heart (1 Peter 1:10–12).

Temptations will confront us to leave the Gospel story behind for one reason or another, for this or that strategy, for an exciting new idea. But the Gospel is not a human story that we can take up or put down as we please. Indeed, we proclaim Jesus because “there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). And so we must hold firmly to God’s message of salvation for us through faith in the Son.

The Substance of the Gospel

In Romans 1:17, Paul says that in the Gospel, “the righteousness of God is revealed.” John Stott explains this “righteousness of God” well when he writes, “It is a righteous status which God requires if we are ever to stand before him, which he achieves through the atoning sacrifice of the cross, which he reveals in the gospel, and which he bestows freely on all who trust in Jesus Christ.”¹ The four verbs of this definition can help us to grasp what the substance of the Gospel is.

This “righteousness of God” is first of all the “righteous status which God requires.” To stand before a holy God, we must be in a state of moral and spiritual perfection. Yet we can never attain such a state by our own power. The law shows us our imperfections, making it clear that “all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags” (Isa. 64:6 KJV).

But nevertheless, it is also a righteousness that God “achieves” in the death of His Son. In the cross, God satisfies His perfect justice by meting out the punishment for sin upon the sinless God-man, Jesus Christ. And because Christ has taken the punishment for sin, God pardons those who believe in the Lord Jesus even though we have sinned and deserve condemnation.

The Gospel is not good advice about what we should do to find salvation. It is the good news of what God has done.

Thirdly, God then “reveals” this righteousness in the proclamation of the good news of Jesus. That’s why Christians are Gospel men and women. That’s why we want to be about the Gospel. That’s why we want to declare the Gospel: because in this Gospel, in this great story, is God’s answer to our problem.

And fourthly, God “bestows” this righteousness on those who come to Christ in faith. Our sin is counted to His account, and His righteousness is counted to ours, so that we stand before God with the innocence of Christ. This is the great exchange, in which God “made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21).

It is by means of this Gospel that men and women are reconciled to Him through Jesus. Jesus did not die as an example. He did not die as a martyr. He died as a substitute. The Gospel is not good advice about what we should do to find salvation. No, it is the good news of what God has done in the Lord Jesus Christ, securing our salvation for us.

This is clearly illustrated in the account of the thief on the cross. He rebuked his fellow thief for despising Jesus, and he made his plea to the Lord: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 23:42). In other words, the thief was saying, “I have no credit at the gate of paradise. The only way I’m going in there is if I can say, ‘I’m with Him.’” And our situation is the same as the thief’s. As William Cowper put so well,

The dying thief rejoiced to see
That fountain in his day;
And there may I, though vile as he,
Wash all my sins away.²

The Scope of the Gospel

Whether you’re more like the thief or the world’s greatest philanthropist, this Gospel is not limited to one gender, to certain ethnicities, to particular backgrounds, or in any other way. No, it is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16, emphasis added). Being united to Christ by faith is the only thing necessary to enter into the benefits of the Gospel. In Romans 1:14, Paul casts his net over all of humanity when he says, “I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish”—that is, under obligation to proclaim this “good news of great joy … for all the people” (Luke 2:10).

It is the responsibility of those who are in Christ to make much of Christ so that those who are outside of Christ may come to be in Christ.

Yet faith is necessary. As Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (John 3:18). John Calvin wrote “that as long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us.”³ It is therefore the responsibility of those who are in Christ to make much of Christ so that those who are outside of Christ may come to be in Christ. This is what Jesus Himself commanded: “Go … and make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19).

When the question of the scope of the Gospel arises, many minds will jump to questions of election and the extent of the atonement. It is true that God’s grace only extends to those who believe, and that not all believe. Yet, as John Murray writes, “It must be said without reserve that there is no limitation of qualification to the overture of grace in the gospel proclamation. … The doctrines of particular election, differentiating love, limited atonement do not erect any fence around the offer in the gospel.”⁴

In other words, we must say at the same time that these are serious theological questions and that they are no barrier to our mandate to proclaim the good news universally and unreservedly. It’s not our responsibility to guess at the secret counsels of God (Deut. 29:29), nor to explain the unexplainable. God has commissioned us to proclaim the Gospel to all, so it is to all that we proclaim. The righteousness from God that comes through faith in Christ is sufficient for all who believe.

The Ongoing Significance of the Gospel

In Christ, the Gospel is the very ground we walk on. To leave it behind is to leave the faith behind altogether. Christians are people who, by God’s grace and not by any merit of their own, have been clothed in Christ’s righteousness and welcomed into God’s family.

If we don’t return to the Gospel again and again, we will fall into worldly thinking. We will cut the vital connection between our righteous status in Christ and the obedience that springs from it, turning to forms of legalism or antinomianism—to human-centered solutions. We may look to our worldly successes or ministry accomplishments as goals rather than tools. Therapy may replace theology, and we will see ourselves as in need principally of encouragement and comfort rather than forgiveness and transformation. Having begun in the Spirit, we will seek to be perfected by the flesh (Gal. 3:3).

There is no church without the Gospel. It is by the Gospel that men and women enter the church. Paul reminds the Ephesians that they entered into Christ and received the Holy Spirit “when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him” (Eph. 1:13). It is the utterly undeserved privilege of all who are in Christ to be included in that innumerable company “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Rev. 7:9). The church throughout the world today exists simply because of the Gospel that has brought us all together in Christ.

If we don’t return to the Gospel again and again, we will fall into worldly thinking.

There is also no Christian unity without the Gospel. It is the Gospel that unites the true church in every place and time as one family. When Paul wrote to the believers “in Corinth,” “in Ephesus,” “in Philippi,” and so on, the key thing was that all were “in Christ.” The family of God extends beyond the borders of city and nation because it is God’s unmistakable purpose from eternity to put together “a people for his own possession” (Titus 2:14; 1 Peter 2:9). The church, wherever it is, in whatever time, calls upon and proclaims the same Lord, who is bound by neither time nor place.

There is also no personal growth without the Gospel. God’s purpose in saving us is to make us like His Son. From eternity He has planned it: we are “predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom. 8:29). In His presence we’ll experience it, because “when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). And even now, “we … are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor. 3:18). In Christ, we’re not seeking to sin a little less and grow a little better; we are asking God to transform us in a way we cannot accomplish ourselves.

And finally, there is no Christian worldview without the Gospel. Sin and rebellion have invaded every part of our humanity, including our intellects, so that by nature we think crookedly. Human philosophies inevitably go wrong, because we think in ungodly ways. As Paul says in Romans 8:7, “The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God.” And yet, “now the righteousness of God has been manifested” (Rom. 3:21). No one will come to an understanding of the truth by climbing some high mountain and having a moment of denouement. No one will think their way into the kingdom. We may know the truth only as we look on the Son, by whom God has spoken to us (Heb. 1:2).

Our “Strong and Perfect Plea”

We need continually to teach the Gospel to ourselves, or we will all too quickly begin to lean on a subjective sense of what is going on in us instead of on the objective reality of what God has done outside of us and for us. Our justification, our sanctification, our proclamation, our coming glorification—in all of it, it is what God has done in Christ that makes the difference. Our only hope, and the hope of the world, is in clinging to Christ by faith. In that hope we may sing,

Before the throne of God above
I have a strong and perfect plea,
A great High Priest, whose name is Love,
Who ever lives and pleads for me.⁵

This article was adapted from the sermon “What Is the Gospel?” by Alistair Begg.