Romans ch.1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.
17 For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.
For years we have endeavoured to answer this question, and for years the answer has eluded us to the point that all has become despair. What is the gospel? Why is it so hard to define, and why does this question have so many answers? This is the most confusing question that even to this day, and especially in this day and age, is the greatest mystery in all of Christendom. Even though we have had an open bible in front of us for hundreds of years, the plain teaching of what the gospel is, open on the pages of God’s holy writ, and generations of God’s very own saints to expound the truth of what has been revealed; still to this day the greatest need in the church is unity in what the faith of the gospel of God is. It is our purpose to expound this truth and to answer the question, “What is the gospel?”.
Over the years, in our christian journey we have encountered endless explanations of what the gospel is; yet Paul tells us that their is only one gospel and that the one and only gospel is a gospel that is definite and unchangeable; it can be expressed succinctly, as the apostles do in their epistles, or, it can be twisted and made false, like the apostles warn us about in these same epistles. Any gospel that calls itself such, but, does not conform to the teaching of the apostles ” is not another(gospel); but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ.”(Gal 1:7). The implication is that the true gospel is being manipulated and twisted; so we should never be surprised when false gospels have elements of the true gospel in them; as well, there are numerous gospels that are nothing more than the inventions of mans vain philosophical desire to express what he, as man, believes this gospel should be. There are so many false gospels in the world today, it is truly only by the miracle of God the Holy Spirit that anyone of His saints should ever come to know what this gospel is. I wonder dear reader what your response to our question would be, “What is the gospel”?
In our two verses from Romans chapter one, we have what is the most succinct expression of what the theme and subject of apostolic preaching is. There are perhaps no two greater verses in all of scripture that express the answer to this query, “What is the gospel?”. In verse 16 the apostle gives the theme in general of what this entire epistle to the Romans is about, and then in verse 17 he gives a general exposition of the theme. And then in verse 18 until the end of chapter 11 he works out his propositions of these two mighty verses. And, all of this amounts to what the gospel is.
So what is the gospel? Paul gives the answer to this question in verse 16; and, here we have it in its clearest, most potent, and essential form, the gospel is “the power of God unto salvation”. What does this mean? It means that the gospel is God’s method of salvation, it means that it is God’s power that saves men and women from this untoward evil world. It means that God is all in all and that man in his desperate state of sin and slavery to the devil has absolutely nothing to do with this gospel. Gospel means ‘good news’ and man is utterly incapable of creating anything that would justify the calling of something ‘good news’. The gospel begins with God and the gospel ends with God, it’s the fact that men and women are being brought into the glorious presence of God the Father, that makes this ‘good news’! It means so many things, so many in fact, that there is an entire Bible filled with line after line of what we would call sermon headings. The gospel is an endless topic, it is something that can never be put in a box as it were, or shared in ten minutes, or even ten years; it is an endless source of good news from God the Father to His children.
So if this be true that the gospel is endless in its good news, then how can we say that the gospel is distinct, definite, and succinct; how do we say that there are false gospels if the gospel be endless in its character? We can say this for this very fact, that the gospel is like the body of Christ itself, many different parts but one body; the eye is so complex and delicate we could discuss its beauty and function for centuries, and in fact we have. Well, the same applies to all parts of this wonderful body of which we call the gospel. No matter how complex the entirety of a body might seem, we know that every part is in agreement and harmony with all the other parts. This is how the gospel can be made certain and specific. Paul is about to expound the meaning of the gospel in the next 11 chapters of this epistle to the Romans, and as we have alluded to above, each and every line of scripture from here until then is a sermon heading; we are not simply looking at a straight forward discourse of a plus b equals c and there you have it. By no means dear reader, what we are about to embark upon is far more than what human intellect can even appreciate, we are about to witness the whole council of God as it is carefully worked out by a man of genius intellect being guided by God the Holy Spirit. This apostle will answer every argument that man has against God’s position as author of this glorious gospel, and he will do so in a manner that leaves absolutely no room for dissension or for invention. The apostle will show us exactly what this gospel is and how it is impossible to twist it despite it being so deep and so wide that the entire world and her history has been swallowed up in it. We will see that there is no room for error or twisting of this truth; for like a human body, there is not room or occasion to have two left feet, or twelve fingers, or three arms. And, God’s gospel is complete, so like a body that is perfected, nothing is truncated; there are always two ears, two arms, one heart, &ct.
Dear reader, the gospel is the most glorious thing that ever was, is, or will be! The gospel is God’s doing, it is the expression of His power as concerning His creation and what He intends to do about His creation. As simple as the gospel is, is as complex as the gospel is. We must never over simplify or over complicate the gospel, but, we must accept what it is in it’s essence, and the gospel is the power that God uses to save His creation from it’s current state that it has been perpetually in since Adam and Eve first fell from grace; and, thus all of creation itself now waits “…for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.”
Scripture Alone 