What is THE GOSPEL?

What is the Gospel? Is it really Good News?

In a recent Men’s meeting, we discussed this subject “What is the Gospel?”. It is an oft used word and is applied in many ways. In fact, it is so used, has it almost become rote?

We hoped to get a better understanding of the subject and deepen our discussion by agreeing to define specific words we use, then, to describe that same word. For an example, we defined rain?

Define:

  • rain is precipitation.

  • rain is condensation.

  • Rain is liquid water in the form of droplets that have condensed from atmospheric water vapor and then precipitated.

OK. Now we have a definition of rain. But do we have an understanding of rain?

Next, we DESCRIBED rain:

  • rain is wet and feels good warm.

  • rain gives us water to drink.

  • rain grows food.

  • rain replenishes the earth.

  • rain promotes life.

  • Etc.

See the difference? Defining a word then describing that same word is a complimentary way to get a fuller, deeper, useful understanding.

Now, let’s ask, “What is the GOSPEL?”

Let’s Define the word:

  • “An account describing the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth” (wikipedia)

  • Good news.

  • Romans 1: 16 ¶ 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. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “BUT THE RIGHTEOUS man SHALL LIVE BY FAITH.”

Let’s go a little deeper…

The Gospel, by strong’s concordance, is “the glad tidings of salvation through Christ, the proclamation of the grace of God manifest and pledged in Christ”.

Now, let’s describe the Gospel:

  • Mt 4:23 Jesus was going throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people.

  • Mt 11:5 the BLIND RECEIVE SIGHT and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the POOR HAVE THE GOSPEL PREACHED TO THEM

  • Mt 24:14 “This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.

  • Mr 8:35 “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it.

  • Mr 10:29,30 Jesus said, “Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms, for My sake and for the gospel’s sake, but that he will receive a hundred times as much now in the present age, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms, along with persecutions; and in the age to come, eternal life.