The gospel is news—good news about what God has done and is doing in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The message of the gospel may lead to a whole host of things that must be done by those who embrace it, but the outworking of the gospel is not the same thing as the gospel.

Every year the evangelical churches here in Galway rent a stall in the Christmas market that fills the square in the centre of the city from mid-November to mid-December. We use the opportunity to share the gospel with passers-by—to explain why the Son of God left heaven and came into the world as a human being. As part of our preparation we have been going over the fundamentals of the message we are hoping to share, to make sure that everyone is clear on what the gospel is.

Surely that shouldn’t be necessary in evangelical (‘gospel’) churches?! If someone asked you to explain the Christian message in just a few minutes, would you know what to say? There are all kinds of good things that we could say, but what are the essentials that must be communicated?

There is a fair bit of confusion on this point, even among evangelicals today. One of the reasons for that is that in recent years the word ‘gospel’ has been stretched to refer to all kinds of things. About twenty years ago, D.A. Carson started asking students at seminary what the gospel is. He was surprised and troubled by the wide range of answers he received. Here are some of the things those theological students said:

‘Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.’

‘Love the Lord your God and love your neighbour as yourself.’

Do social justice: ‘make poverty history,’ ‘end abortion now,’ ‘save the planet!’

When we look at the Bible however, we discover that the gospel is news—good news about what God has done and is doing in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The message of the gospel may lead to a whole host of things that must be done by those who embrace it, but the outworking of the gospel is not the same thing as the gospel.

So what are the key elements of this good news? When we survey the apostles’ preaching or writing about the gospel in the New Testament, we discover that there are four components that are fundamental to the good news, either explicitly or implicitly. We can sum them up in four words: God, man, Christ, response. I don’t want to suggest that the gospel can be reduced to a soundbite—these four headings summarize depths that to all eternity we will never plumb—things into which angels long to look. But these four words give accurate and convenient headings to these vast subjects.

One of the clearest places where these four elements of the gospel are set out is in Romans 1-4. In 1.16, Paul tells his readers that the gospel is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes. This is the theme of the rest of the letter, as Paul unpacks the gospel message step by step (chapters 1-4), and then explains some of the major implications of believing the gospel in the rest of the book.  As we think about the components of the gospel message, I want to use the analogy of a picture.

God

This truth is like the frame in which the picture is set. God created the universe and everything and everyone in it. That means we are accountable to him. More than that, the God who created us is holy and righteous, so his standards are perfect—he cannot turn a blind eye to evil. Paul makes this clear in Romans 1.20—man is not his own master because God created world: For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. We owe him honour and glory and obedience because he made us and owns us.

Man

This second element is like the mount behind the picture. The colour of the mount is chosen to set off the picture to the best advantage. In the case of the gospel, the mount is the darkest shade of black there is (Vantablack, if you’re interested—a super-black coating that absorbs up to 99.96% of visible light).

Human beings sinned against God. They committed cosmic treason by rebelling against God’s righteous rule. As Paul puts it in Romans 1.23, they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images. What arrogance and wickedness! To behave as though anything is more glorious than Almighty God! Nor is it just certain especially bad people who do this—Paul spreads the net wider and wider in chapters 2 and 3 to include decent, moral people and religious people like the Jews until he comes to the conclusion in Romans 3.10-12:

None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.

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