Doctrine of the Day: The Gospel

Imagine you are either working in your front yard talking to a neighbor, or walking down an aisle at Wal-Mart and run into a friend, or standing in the break room at work chatting with a co-worker, or visiting with your family from out of town. You are having a pleasant conversation about the events of the day when seemingly out of the blue this person says to you, “What is the gospel?”

Whoa! Where did that come from? That is not a topic on our list of polite, yet insignificant conversations that we rehearse everyday. You know the list. 

• At work you are allowed to talk about sports, TV shows, internet jokes, funny family stories, and your boss.

• With your neighbor you discuss your yard, garden, the weather and “Didja hear about so-n-so?”

• Wal-Mart run-ins have to be short and sweet lest the milk in our cart go bad. That usually means you can give a quick, “Hey, I haven’t seen you in a while. Well, gotta run. I’ve got milk souring in my cart.” 

• Families of course can talk about anything as long as it doesn’t make the visit tense. Which usually brings us back to the standard, sports, TV, and “Didja hear about so-n-so?” 

We just aren’t prepared to answer possibly the most important question we could be asked, “Can you tell me how to have hope in this world?” 

Granted there aren’t that many people asking that question. Which is why we should be bringing it up without being prompted. 

So, can you answer the question? Can you tell people what the gospel is? 

This summer I am going to be teaching through a series on Sunday nights that will hopefully help our church answer this question and give us tools to communicate the gospel clearly in everyday conversations. 

I have tried to boil the gospel down into is kernel form many times. Here is my latest attempt to get the gospel into a short paragraph. If fact this is the gospel in 111 words…

God created us for His glory. We have all sinned and fallen short of that Glory. God in his mercy sent his only Son to take on flesh, live out his Father’s righteous requirements, die on a cross as a substitute for our death, taking away our sin and God’s wrath, and giving us his own righteousness. On the third day He rose from the dead and now reigns in heaven. In doing this He made the ONLY way for us to see and savor the glory of God through a relationship with Him. This He offers freely by his grace if we would repent and place our faith in Him.

I still want to work on that some more. But there are 5 key words that I think we must consistently communicate in order for people to know and understand the gospel as taught in the Bible:

God. Man. Sin. Christ. Faith. 

Each of those words requires explanation because the gospel IS what we call propositional truth. In other words, there are objective truths that DO have to be known and believed. Even though we need only the faith of a child, we still must understand these five words. 

In the coming weeks I will unpack each of the these words and hopefully refine this explanation a little further. 

In the meantime, I know there aren’t many who know about this blog yet, but I would love to hear how you put the gospel into 111 words or less.