The Basics: What is the Gospel? Part 1 – The Problem
Posted on 24. Nov, 2009 by Les Lanphere in Theology
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” -Romans 1:16
The gospel is the power of God for salvation. The gospel is how people get saved. The gospel is what anybody needs to clearly understand in order to go to heaven. The gospel is the bloodline of the Christian. So what is it?
The gospel means good news, and it is just that, the greatest news mankind has ever known. A problem has been solved. A terrible fate has been changed. A people have been sent a Savior.
I can assume that anybody who has internet access and can read this has also heard this much of the message and probably more. So is knowing this much information what it means to be a Christian? Does knowing that Jesus “died for our sins” get us to heaven? What does that mean?
The purpose of this series is to lay out the absolute basics of what we must believe to be saved. I believe we can summarize the gospel by explaining no less than 3 topics: What is the problem? How did Christ solve that problem? And how is that solution applied to us? I would argue that if anyone has not clearly understood these 3 issues, they have not heard the gospel, and no matter how many decision cards they’ve signed or aisles they’ve walked, they can not saved. In this post I’ll discuss:
What is the problem?
We have to start in the beginning to see the severity of the situation. And in the beginning was God. God is holy. This means that he is without imperfection. God’s mercy, wrath, love and justice are perfect. This is very good for us, His creation. We would have no source for absolute truth, if God compromised. Now let’s talk perfect justice.
When someone commits a crime against us, we want justice, and hopefully we receive it. Justice is good. It means that people get what they deserve. If a murderer didn’t get penalized because the judge was feeling merciful that day, we would throw the judge in prison. The popular concept of karma isn’t far off. We must get what we deserve, it’s only fair.
But here’s the problem. What do we deserve? God’s law demands perfection, or we are punished. Not only are we not perfect, but we are desperately wicked. We sin in thought and deed. We deny God in everything we do. We take credit for things He has done, and we suppress the obvious truth that He exists and rules over us.
The Bible teaches that the problem started in the garden. Adam had a “free will” to obey God or disobey with the consequence of death. When he ate of the fruit, he brought spiritual death upon himself, the world at large, and all of his descendants that were in him. Adam was our representative. Now we are not born with the same neutrality to sin that Adam had. We have a bent toward sin, indeed, we can’t do anything but sin. Everything we do, even “good” things in the eyes of other fallen people, is sin.
When an unbeliever volunteers at a soup kitchen, they can not give the glory to God for working through them. No, they receive the glory, they feel righteous in themselves. Their goal is not to serve the Creator, but to look good in the eyes of others and even to justify themselves. Everything we do is sin, and we can’t stop.
This perpetual sin will not go unpunished by a perfectly just God. We choose to sin and deny God, and the punishment is death. God is angry toward sin and his anger is ultimately poured out on us in Hell. This is called God’s wrath. God has wrath against everyone, because everyone sins.
Religions teach that we can undo the bad stuff with good stuff and make it to God. But our own concepts of justice demonstrate that this isn’t true. Does driving the speed limit make your speeding violation go away? Does not killing more people lead us to forgive the serial killer who stopped 6 years ago? Does obeying the law erase our illegal activity? No, and worse yet, as I’ve demonastrated, you can’t even do the bare minimum to keep the law.
“…all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” -Romans 3:23
Contrary to popular opinion, most people are not headed to Heaven, save the really bad few. The Biblical account is that every single person who has ever lived is in sin and is headed straight for Hell. No one is innocent, no one is going to Heaven.
This is a big problem. What on earth could possibly help this condition? We need a savior…
