Emeka had been in church for eleven years. He was a deacon, he led the welcome team on Sundays, and he could find Habakkuk without checking the contents page. One afternoon in the office canteen, a colleague he respected leaned across the table and asked him a simple question. “I have watched you for a long time,” the man said. “You are different from most people here. So tell me plainly. What do you Christians believe actually saves you?”
Emeka opened his mouth, and what came out surprised him. He talked about being a good person. He talked about coming to church regularly, paying tithe, staying away from certain things. He mentioned that God answers prayer and that his family had seen many testimonies. His colleague listened politely, nodded, and said, “So it is like our own religion. You try hard, and God rewards you.” Emeka wanted to say no. He knew in his spirit that something was wrong with what he had just said. But he could not find the words to correct it, and the conversation moved on to football.
He told me later that he could not sleep that night. “Pastor,” he said, “I have been saved for eleven years and I could not explain the gospel to a man who was actually asking.”
I want to put the same question to you, and I would like you to sit with it before you read further. If someone asked you to explain the gospel without mentioning your church, your pastor or your latest testimony, what would you say? What exactly did you believe when you believed?
The question matters more than it might first appear. A person can attend Christian meetings for years and still think the gospel is an arrangement by which God rewards good people. Another may understand it as a promise that every difficulty will disappear, and when hardship comes, concludes that the gospel has failed. In both cases the trouble began long before the crisis. The message itself was never clearly understood.
PunchlineSo let us go back to the foundation. We do not outgrow this message. We grow in the knowledge of its riches.
The gospel is news
The word the New Testament uses for gospel is euangelion. It means good news, a glad announcement. In the ancient world the word was used when a herald came running into a city with word that a battle had been won or that a king had been born. The people in the city had not fought the battle. They had not contributed anything to the victory. The herald’s job was to tell them what had happened and what it now meant for them.
That is the first thing to settle. The gospel is news before it is anything else. It is the announcement of something God has done. Advice tells you what you should do. News tells you what has already been done. Much of what passes for Christian preaching is really advice: pray more, give more, try harder, be more committed. Some of that advice is good and has its place. None of it is the gospel.
Paul gives us his clearest summary in his first letter to the Corinthians. Listen to how he frames it:
Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.
Look at the content. Christ died for our sins. He was buried. He rose again the third day. Every part of that summary is about something that happened to Jesus in history, in a real place, in a real body. The cross concerns our sins; the resurrection declares that the crucified Jesus lives. Paul even adds that the risen Christ was seen by Peter, by the twelve, by more than five hundred brethren at once, most of whom were still alive when he wrote. He was saying, in effect, “Go and ask them.”
Notice also that Paul is reminding believers of the gospel in which they already stood. The Corinthian church had people in it who were denying the resurrection of the dead. Paul does not treat that as a minor difference of opinion. He says that if Christ has not been raised, their faith is vain and they are still in their sins (1 Corinthians 15:17). A teaching that moves Jesus to the edge of the message has moved away from its centre, however spiritual it sounds.
The gospel also stands inside a long story. Paul opens his letter to the Romans by calling it the gospel of God, “which he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures” (Romans 1:2). Jesus was not God’s emergency plan after the first plan collapsed. From the promise in Eden that the woman’s seed would bruise the serpent’s head, through Abraham, through the sacrifices, through David’s throne and Isaiah’s suffering servant, God was announcing in advance what He would do. When Jesus came, He came as the fulfilment.
This is why we must resist reducing the gospel to one attractive benefit. Healing matters. Provision matters. Deliverance matters, and Scripture speaks about all of them. But a person can receive an answer to a practical need and still not understand reconciliation with God. Many people in our nation came to church because of a miracle, and thank God for every one. Yet the miracle was meant to point them to the Saviour. If it only points them back to the next miracle, the gospel has not yet been heard.
The gospel is the announcement of what God has done in Christ. Advice tells you what to do. The gospel tells you what has been done.
Why we needed more than improvement
To understand why this is good news, we need to understand the bad news it answers. Paul spends nearly three chapters of Romans on this before he says a word about the solution. He shows that Gentiles without the law are guilty, that Jews with the law are guilty, and that religious knowledge, admirable intentions and comparison with someone worse do not change the verdict. Then he closes the door completely:
Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
Every mouth stopped. That is a remarkable picture. In a courtroom, the moment comes when the defence has nothing more to say. Every argument has been heard, and the evidence is plain. Paul says the whole world stands there before God.
Let me give you an illustration that has helped many people. Suppose a man reverses out of his compound one morning and crushes his neighbour’s new car. The neighbour comes out, sees the damage, and is understandably upset. The man responds, “Calm down. I have been driving for twenty years without a single accident. I give lifts to people in this street. I am a respectable man.” Every word of that may be true. None of it repairs the car. His good record does not touch the damage he has done.
In a far deeper way, our respectable actions cannot erase our guilt. The problem is worse than a bad record, though. Scripture describes our condition before Christ in terms that go beyond guilt. Paul writes to the Ephesians, “And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). Dead. The language is deliberate. A sick man needs medicine and a confused man needs advice. A dead man needs life, and he cannot supply it to himself.
This is where so much religion goes wrong. It treats the human problem as weakness to be strengthened or ignorance to be educated. So it offers programmes, rules, disciplines and spiritual exercises. Those things can be useful to a living person. They are useless to a dead one. You can dress a corpse in the finest agbada and seat him in the front row of the cathedral. He remains a corpse.
I know this sounds severe. But the severity of the diagnosis is what gives the cure its glory. If we were only slightly unwell, a slightly helpful message would do. Because we were dead, God did something no religion has ever imagined.
What God did about it
NuggetHere is where the news breaks in. Right after shutting every mouth, Paul writes the two most important words in the letter: “But now.”
But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; To declare, I say , at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
Read that slowly. The righteousness God requires is the righteousness God gives. It is received by faith in Jesus Christ, and it comes to all who believe, because all have sinned. We are justified freely by His grace. The word freely is the same word Jesus uses when He says, “They hated me without a cause” (John 15:25). Without a cause. There was nothing in us that caused God to justify us. The cause was entirely in His grace.
What does it mean to be justified? It is a courtroom word. It is the verdict of the judge. When a judge in Ikeja declares a defendant righteous in the eyes of the law, he is not describing how the man feels or how he behaved last week. He is pronouncing a legal standing. Justification is God’s gracious verdict of righteousness concerning those who believe in Christ, and it rests entirely on what Christ has done.
But how can God do that and remain just? A judge who simply waved away the guilt of criminals would be a corrupt judge. Paul anticipates the question. God set forth Christ as a propitiation through faith in His blood, so that He might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. The cross is where God’s justice and God’s mercy meet. Sin was not ignored. It was judged, fully and finally, in the body of His Son.
Paul says it in one breathtaking sentence to the Corinthians: “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Theologians call it the great exchange. He took what was ours so that we might receive what was His. Our sin went to Him. His righteousness came to us.
And the resurrection is God’s public declaration that the payment was accepted. Paul writes that Jesus “was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification” (Romans 4:25). If Jesus had stayed in the grave, we would have no assurance that His death had accomplished anything. The empty tomb is the Father’s receipt. The debt is settled.
Now listen to what this means for the believer. Grace does not pretend that sin is harmless. The cross reveals how serious it was. Yet the same cross that shows the seriousness of sin shows the completeness of its removal. This is why the gospel produces both humility and confidence in the same heart. Humility, because we contributed nothing but the need. Confidence, because what Christ did cannot be undone.
Paul gives us the order of things in Ephesians 2, and the order matters enormously:
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.
By grace, through faith, not of works. Then verse 10: we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works. Good works are present in the passage, and they are important. But they come after, as the fruit of a new life. They are never the root. We receive life in Christ, and that life bears fruit. We cannot reverse the order and ask our fruit to purchase our place in Him.
Many sincere believers have the order back to front. They work hard at being good so that God will accept them, and they live under a constant low anxiety, never quite sure if they have done enough. The gospel turns them around. You are accepted in the Beloved. Now, from that acceptance, walk in the good works God prepared for you. The pressure goes out of the relationship and the fruitfulness comes in.
The power is in the message
Paul made a bold statement about the gospel that we often quote without noticing its implications:
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. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.
The gospel is the power of God unto salvation. Paul does not say the gospel describes the power, or that the gospel is accompanied by power. He says the gospel is the power. When the message of Christ crucified and risen is declared and believed, God Himself acts. Dead people come alive. Guilty people are justified. Strangers become sons.
This has two consequences for anyone who teaches or preaches.
The first is that the power belongs to God, not to the preacher. We should prepare carefully and speak clearly. We should be passionate, because the subject deserves it. But no amount of noise can make up for an absent gospel. A meeting can be loud, emotional and exciting and still leave people exactly where they were before God, because the one thing that carries saving power was never actually said. Emotion may accompany faith. Emotion itself cannot reconcile anyone to God.
The second is that the gospel does not depend on the people who carry it. Peter makes this point when he writes about the new birth:
Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever. For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.
Peter quotes Isaiah 40. All flesh is grass. Preachers wither. Great ministries fade. Famous names are forgotten within a generation. But the word of the Lord endureth for ever, and Peter tells his readers plainly that this enduring word is the gospel that was preached to them. You were born again by something that will outlast the man who preached it to you. That is why your faith does not have to collapse when a minister you admired disappoints you. You were not born of him. You were born of the incorruptible seed.
How a person receives it
If the gospel is news, the right response to news is to believe it. Paul makes this simple in Romans 10:
That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
Faith receives what the gospel announces. It is the open hand that takes the gift. Faith is not a work that earns salvation; it is the means by which we receive what grace has provided. That is why Paul can say salvation is by grace through faith in the same breath as he says it is not of works.
Notice the content of the confession: Jesus as Lord, and God raising Him from the dead. We are directing a person to the living Christ. A prayer of response can be a wonderful help in expressing faith, and I have led many people in such prayers. But the syllables of a prayer are not a saving mechanism. If someone repeats the words without trusting the Person, the words alone do nothing. If someone trusts the Person and stumbles over the words, God hears the heart.
Repentance belongs here too. Jesus began His ministry with the call, “repent ye, and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15). The word repentance means a change of mind that turns a person around. In repentance I abandon my claim to save myself and I turn from the allegiance I gave to sin. I stop arguing with God’s verdict and I agree with it.
Repentance, though, is not a payment added to Christ’s work. Some people think they must feel sorry enough, or cry long enough, or fix themselves up enough before God will receive them. That is the old religion creeping back in. The prodigal son had a whole speech prepared about being made a hired servant. His father did not let him finish it. He ran, he fell on his neck, he called for the robe and the ring. The son’s turning home was real repentance. The welcome was entirely the father’s grace.
Peace with God changes how you live
Once a person is justified, everything about their relationship with God is different. Paul opens Romans 5 with the results:
Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
Peace with God. This is a restored relationship, more than a calm feeling. The war is over. There may be days when you feel anything but peaceful. A believer can be distressed, grieved or anxious and still be at peace with God, because that peace rests on what Christ did and not on the state of your emotions this morning. Your feelings need the guidance of truth. They cannot change the status that the cross secured.
I think of a young man I will call Daniel. Whenever he prayed, he spent most of his time apologising for existing. He would begin, “Lord, I know I am not worthy, I know I have failed You again, I know I do not deserve to come before You,” and by the time he had finished listing his unworthiness, he had no strength left to actually talk with God. A difficult week convinced him that God had withdrawn His favour. A good week made him nervous because he expected it to end.
Daniel was born again. He loved God. But he was living as though the gospel had made him a probationary employee in God’s house, permanently one mistake away from dismissal.
What changed him was reading Romans 5 slowly, again and again, until it got past his head. His acceptance rested on Christ. Access into grace was something he already had, a standing he was already in. When he sinned, he could confess it honestly and turn from it, and he did not need to behave as though Jesus must be crucified again before the Father would receive him. His prayers changed. They became conversations. And strangely, his struggle with sin began to lose its grip, because he was no longer fighting from the position of a condemned man.
That brings us to an important distinction. The gospel does not remove the Father’s correction. Hebrews 12 tells us plainly that the Lord disciplines those He loves, as a father deals with sons. But discipline and condemnation are completely different things. Condemnation tells you that you have no place. Discipline trains a person who already belongs. A father who corrects his son at the dinner table is not threatening to throw him out of the house. He is correcting him precisely because he is his son. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1), and there is still loving correction for them. We must learn to tell the two apart.
Paul also shows that grace itself is a teacher:
For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.
The grace that brings salvation teaches us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, righteously and godly in this present world. If our version of grace makes holiness irrelevant, we have lost something essential. If our version of holiness makes acceptance depend on flawless performance, we have lost the gospel. Christ gave Himself to redeem us and to purify a people zealous of good works. Both halves belong together, and grace is the source of both.
Let the gospel examine the message
Because the gospel is so precious, Scripture guards it fiercely. Paul’s words to the Galatians are some of the strongest in the New Testament:
I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.
What was this other gospel? It was not a denial of Jesus. The people troubling the Galatians spoke about Christ and probably quoted Scripture well. Their error was addition. They taught that Gentile believers must also be circumcised and keep the law of Moses to secure their standing with God. Jesus, plus something. Paul saw that the moment you add a requirement to Christ as the basis of acceptance, you have not improved the gospel. You have replaced it.
This danger did not end in the first century. The additions just change their clothing. Sometimes it is a ritual you must perform. Sometimes it is a special seed you must sow, a particular prophet you must follow, an inherited family practice you must break before God can truly accept you, or a list of rules about dress and food that separates the real Christians from the rest. Each of these may sound reverent. Each one quietly moves the weight of a person’s confidence away from Christ.
So we must learn to examine what a message actually asks people to trust. Here are some questions worth asking of any teaching, including mine:
- Does it explain Jesus within the whole witness of Scripture?
- Does it present His death and resurrection as sufficient for reconciliation with God?
- Does it call people to faith in Him, and to a life consistent with His lordship?
- Or does it make some payment, a private revelation or a ritual indispensable to God’s acceptance?
Discernment requires more than hearing the name of Jesus in a sermon. The Galatian error arose among people who used Christian language fluently. Read the passage being taught. Follow the argument. Compare the interpretation with the apostolic witness as a whole. The Bereans in Acts 17 received Paul’s message with all readiness of mind and then searched the Scriptures daily to see whether those things were so. Their seriousness did not insult Paul. It honoured the truth.
At the same time, we must be careful not to call every disagreement another gospel. Believers differ on church government, on the order of last events, on styles of worship and many other questions. Those discussions matter, and we should have them with charity. The question that separates the true gospel from a false one is whether a teaching contradicts the identity and saving work of Christ, or replaces the basis on which we receive God’s grace.
What Emeka would say now
Let me take you back to the office canteen. Emeka went home after that conversation and did something he had never done in eleven years of church life. He sat down with Romans, Ephesians and 1 Corinthians 15 and read them like a man looking for something he had lost. Over several weeks, it came together for him. He told me he felt as though he had been living in a house for years without ever going into its best rooms.
A few months later his colleague raised the subject again. This time Emeka was ready. He said something like this:
“I gave you the wrong answer last time. What saves us is not how good we are. The Bible says all of us have sinned, and our good deeds cannot cancel that, any more than a good driving record repairs a car you have damaged. What saves us is what God did. He sent His Son, Jesus, who lived without sin, and on the cross He took the judgement that our sins deserved. Then God raised Him from the dead to show that the payment was complete. When I trust Jesus, God credits His righteousness to me as a gift. I go to church and I try to live well because I have been accepted, not so that I will be accepted.”
His colleague was quiet for a while. Then he said, “That is very different from what I thought you believed.” It was the beginning of a long conversation that is still going on.
That is what a clear gospel does. It sounds different because it is different. Every religion in the world can be summarised by the word do. The gospel is summarised by the word done. When Jesus cried from the cross, “It is finished,” He was not describing His own life coming to an end. He was announcing that the work of redemption was complete.
When you share this good news with someone, begin by listening. Ask what they believe about God and what they think makes a person acceptable to Him. Their answer will show you where explanation is needed. You do not have to humiliate anyone before you can speak truthfully about sin. Explain who Jesus is, why His death matters and why His resurrection gives hope. Read a short passage together, perhaps Romans 5:6-11 or Ephesians 2:1-10. Allow their questions. Invite them to trust Christ and to openly acknowledge Him as Lord. And where there is a response of faith, do not leave them alone. Walk with them into baptism, the Word, prayer and the life of a sound local church.
Be careful, too, not to promise what Scripture does not promise. Receiving Christ does not mean a person will never grieve, never face persecution and never need a doctor. Romans 8 holds adoption and suffering in the same chapter. The promise of the gospel is deeper than comfort. Those who belong to Christ are held in the love of God, and nothing in all creation can separate them from it.
And if you teach believers, keep returning to this centre. Explain the gospel within marriage, work, giving, forgiveness and service. Let people see how the grace of Christ supplies both the ground of their acceptance and the pattern of their love. A congregation established here is far harder to manipulate with fear, and far more willing to serve faithfully when nobody is applauding.
PunchlineThe gospel is the best news anyone has ever heard. It is worth knowing well enough to explain over lunch.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- If a colleague asked you tomorrow what saves a person, what would you say in two or three sentences?
- Why does Paul insist that the resurrection is essential to the gospel, and not just a happy ending?
- What is the difference between good works as fruit and good works as the basis of acceptance? Where have you seen the two confused?
- Can a message mention Jesus often and still direct people’s trust away from Him? Think of an example without attacking any person.
This Week
Read Romans 3:21-28, Romans 5:1-11 and Ephesians 2:1-10 on three separate days. Then write out a short explanation of the gospel using only those passages, in language a friend who has never been to church would understand. Share it with a mature believer and ask whether you have made Christ clear.
A Prayer
Father, thank You for the gift of Your Son. Thank You that He died for my sins, was buried, and rose again the third day. Establish my heart in what He has done. Expose every place where I have quietly added my performance to His sufficiency. Teach me to speak the gospel clearly and to live in a manner worthy of it. My confidence is in Jesus Christ alone. I have peace with You through Him, and I gladly yield my life to His lordship. In His name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.