What is the Gospel (Evangel) of Jesus Christ?

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The Gospel literally means “Good News.” In today’s mainstream “Christian” circles, the “good news” has been reduced to “turn or burn (usually, for eternity).” With eternal conscious torment (ECT), that would mean the unbelieving will suffer endlessly in flames. With annihilationism, the unbelieving are burned to ashes. Now, how is that good news? Well, I guess only “good news” for some and, “oh well,” for the rest. The Gospel is spelled out in 1Cor 15:1,

“Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, 2 by which also you are saved, if you hold fast (retain) the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.
3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that He appeared to Cephas (or Peter), then to the twelve” (NASB).
To be saved, is to believe the Message, that is that Christ:
  1. Died for our sins, according to the Scriptures
  2. Was entombed
  3. Was roused from the dead on the third day, according to the Scriptures
Why does it say “according to the Scriptures?” Before Jesus’ time, there were people in the OT called the Prophets, and they predicted that this Great Event, known as the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, would take place hundreds of years after they lived. They enthusiastically wrote about it, because it would be The Way that God was going to reconcile all men back to Himself (2Cor 5:19)!

Why do we need salvation? Why do we need a Savior?
“There is none righteous, not even one;
11 There is none who understands,
There is none who seeks for God;
12 All have turned aside, together they have become useless;
There is none who does good,
There is not even one.” - Romans 3:10-12
In our natural state, mankind is not capable of doing right. We cannot save ourselves. We, therefore, need a savior. It's kind of like a lifeguard. What does a lifeguard do? He watches for people that are drowning, and he dives into the water, and he saves them. We are in the same situation. We have "drowned" in our sins and we need the Savior to "revive" us.

What are we saved from?
If you said Hell, you would be mistaken. I would like to point that an eternal torture chamber was never mentioned as part of the curse when man disobeyed in the Garden of Eden. “...but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for on the day that you eat from it you will certainly die (some translations say “you shall surely die the death”)” (Gen 2:17). No mention of eternal torment (and no – “perish” does not mean “eternal punishment” as someone insisted). “The wages of sin is death” as Paul said in Rom 6:23. So, Jesus paid our death penalty. Pure and simple. If He had not come, led a sinless life by following all 200+ laws for His entire life, and dying a criminal’s death on that wretched cross, we would die and never rise again.

When are we saved?
Are we saved when we fall on our knees and ask God to fix our lives and give us salvation? No. Are we saved when we call upon the Name of the Lord? No. Are we saved when we are baptized? No. All of these are not bad in and of themselves. But, none of these are the point at which we are saved. We, all of humanity, was saved at the Cross 2,000 years ago! When Jesus was suffering on His Cross, He took all of humanity’s sin into Him, punishing it for all time! He cured the problem of sin, and because of Him, we have the antidote to our sickness. Because of Him, all of humanity can live! All of the times that people say, “I was saved at an altar call,” or “I was saved when I prayed Jesus into my heart,” are not when they were saved. They were only when they realized they were saved.

An analogy I would like to give would be about the American Southern slaves that had not heard about the Emancipation Proclamation, and that they were now free, according to US law. They were already free, but they just didn’t know it. Not yet. In the same way, those that God had chosen from the foundation of the world will be saved at the Cross, but they won't realize it until someone leads them to that wonderful realization that they are saved and loved by God.

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