Gospel
The gospel means good news. It is good news about hope both in in life and in death. A human is valuable and God has not left them alone.
Disconnection from God
Disconnection from God is seen in many ways in the world. A human has needs to be sufficient, accepted, and valued, but often these needs are not fully fulfilled. A human also has a need to do something meaningful. Many people bear guilt for things that cannot be changed anymore. How to be fully accepted if you know to have transgressed against yourself or others? When a person’s needs are not fulfilled in a profound way, often what remains is conditional love and an attempt to find meaning in something that is lacking: I am accepted if I am good enough, I am accepted if some significant person accepts me, I am accepted if I achieve something, I seek meaning for my life from something uncertain and transient. This is not an enduring solution. God has something better to offer.
Sin
Disconnection from God is due to sin. Sin can be described as us not giving to God what belongs to him, that is our whole lives. Every person’s life belongs to God because he is the creator of the whole universe. We have transgressed against God and people in many ways. Jesus came to make connection with God a possibility. This connection can fulfill human needs in a profound way.
Jesus Christ
People are made in God’s image. They are valuable to God even if they are disconnected from him. This value is expressed in God’s giving his Son to die on the cross for each individual. When a person believes how valuable God considers him to be, his concept of his own value is not dependent on changing opinions of other people.
The Gospel of John begins with a description of God’s Son (Gospel of John 1:1-18). ”He was with God in the beginning” and he ”was God”. ”Through him all things were made.” He existed already before the creation. ”Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” God’s Son came into the world to reveal God. This Son of God is Jesus Christ. He ”takes away the sin of the world” (Gospel of John 1:29). Receiving Jesus is believing in who he is, and this leads to the person becoming a child of God.
Jesus’s death on the cross
God’s response to sin and the disconnection it caused from God is Jesus’s death on the cross and the subsequent resurrection. By dying on the cross, Jesus atoned for (paid for) the sins of humanity to God. The atonement makes it possible for a person to be reconciled to God. The Bible says that Jesus Christ is the atoning sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. (First epistle of John 2:2). Because of the atonement, a person can be forgiven by God by believing in Jesus. No sin is too great to be forgiven.
In addition to dying on the cross, Jesus was raised from the dead. His tomb was empty and he appeared to several people after his resurrection. He showed that he was alive and he taught his followers during forty days until he ascended to heaven (Acts of the Apostles 1:1–11). Jesus’s resurrection was necessary for people to have resurrection and eternal life (First epistle to the Corinthians 15:17–21).
Salvation and eternal life
Because of the atonement by Jesus, a person can be reconciled to God and be fully accepted by him and become his own. Because of Jesus, God accepts his own even when he does not accept their deeds. This unconditional acceptance gives security as it is not dependent on one’s success or others’ opinions. Part of security is knowing that one is secure regardless of the future. This relates to the promise of eternal life as a life lived in connection with God. He overcame death and offers eternal life in connection with God to those who believe in him. In the words of the Gospel of John: ”For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (Gospel of John 3:16).
Security
Jesus himself takes the responsibility for the permanence of salvation. It is part of the mission God the Father gave to him. The Gospel of John reports Jesus as saying: “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” (Gospel of John 6:37–40.) So, if anyone who believes in him did not have eternal life or was not raised in the last day or was lost, Jesus would not have fulfilled the Father’s will. It is not about the success of the believer but of Jesus, which makes the promise unconditional.
Purpose
A human longs for purpose for their life. Alienated from the purpose given by God, they seek it from others or from themselves. Only God can tell what the purpose of what he has created is. He wants people to live connected to him. Get to know him. He reveals himself in the Bible. If you do not yet have a church, find one for yourself where you can grow in knowing him.
Life in connection with God is meaningful because God himself considers it meaningful.
Human part
The gospel is good news about salvation and eternal life together with God. A person is in need of salvation because they are disconnected from God. God offers salvation as a free gift. It is received by faith. Epistle to the Ephesians describes it in this way: ”For it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith—
and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Epistle to the Ephesians 2:8–9). Salvation cannot be earned by anything, not by faith or by deeds. The issue in salvation is not the amount of faith but of its object. Place your trust in Jesus as God’s Son and atonement for your sins, one who overcame death by his resurrection and who saves those who trust in him.
(All citations are from the New International Version translation of the Bible.)