A Four-Part Gospel
TL;DR: The gospel goes further than salvation. God is still working in you. Share the gospel and live as followers of Jesus.
If you are a Christian, you’ve probably heard of the word “gospel”. It’s connected to common phrases like, “God loves you” or “Jesus died for your sins.”
It comes from the Hebrew word, bisser or it’s noun, bessorah.
The Greek New Testament equivalent is euangelion, which is a compound word.
All of these words mean good news, but what kind of news?
What Kind of Gospel?
Well, just like the four gospels of the Bible, the gospel message itself is also in four parts:
- Creation
- Fall
- Salvation
- Sanctification
It’s a message that’s seemingly absurd, but both profound and more importantly, true.
Creation and Fall
The Bible begins with God over the chaotic waters, commanding order from chaos - life from death. And in this garden that God creates, He places two very special trees but also two humans - Adam and Eve. Both humans make the conscious decision to rebel against God by taking from the tree and choosing autonomy according to their own (lacking) wisdom. And things go really bad.
Relationships are broken, they are exiled from the garden, and they - for the first time - face death.
Salvation
Thousands of years later, we come across this figure called Jesus of Nazareth. And He’s out there, teaching, preaching, and healing with the authority of God. He makes divine claims about Himself, and He finally finds Himself hung from a cross by His own people. It would be incredibly tragic if that’s where the story ended.
But no! Rather, the story picks up and the defeated disciples meet the risen Jesus. They learn about how Jesus’ death was necessary. God’s people, for all throughout history, failed to be who they were meant to be. We were created to be bountiful, and to reign over God’s creation alongside Him (think of the garden story!)
But in failing to do so, Jesus came down as God incarnate - the perfect Human. Instead of God starting all over again with humans (like the flood story), Jesus came and died for His people and atoned for their sins. He became the perfect human we’ve failed to become.
Sanctification
The story doesn’t end there either. Jesus ascended to heaven but God still works in His people. This is a process that’s called sanctification. More and more, each day, we become like Jesus - the ideal Human and God Himself. This is what it’s like, living as God’s chosen people.
And living as followers of Jesus, the natural outcome is to share what we love the most - the good news about Jesus.