Jul 17
28
What Is The Gospel?
After all the logic, after all the reasoning, when the smoke blows away and the dust settles we are left finally with this piercing question. We know that, “The gospel is the [only] power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes …” “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” So, what is the content of this gospel and what is the message contained in this name?
When the apostle Paul said “we preach Christ crucified”, he did not mean, we’re going to affirm the historical facts surrounding a man named Jesus that died upon a Roman cross. Neither did he mean we’re going to present the theological foundations and the Biblical dogma supporting the idea of a Saviour who died for sinners. Though our gospel is solidly historical, profoundly theological, and consistently Biblical, the message of our gospel is far too personal and powerful to be reduced to a mere proposition. No, we are to proclaim and believe a Jesus who is in all His attributes the anointed One of God. A Jesus who sovereignly secured the salvation of His people by satisfying all the demands of God’s holy law and laying His life down as a Substitute, atoned for the elect of God once and for all.
There are those who say “yes, I believe that is the content of the gospel”, yet they refuse to denounce the freewill Arminian gospel they were “saved” under. They are unwilling to say that the content of THE one and only gospel that has the power to save is NOT in the message of the popular jesus. I can only come to one conclusion. They don’t really believe the gospel. Not savingly. The message you believe you were “saved” under is the message you believe the gospel to be. Again I ask you, “What is the gospel?” – Greg Elmquist