What is the Gospel?
The Gospel is the announcement that God’s good rule has been restored to the world in Jesus the King. It includes the story of how this came about through His coming, life, teaching, death, resurrection, and ascension.
Why do we need the Gospel? Because apart from the restoration of God’s good rule, we cannot live in the fullness that God intended when He created us. The only way to have life on earth as it is in heaven is to live under God’s good king.
God: The Good Creator-King
In the beginning, God created the world. He created it to provide bountifully for his creatures. On the 7th day, God rested. God resting is often connected to His being enthroned among us. This makes the 7th day the greatest day of creation for God now dwells with humans.
When God created humankind, we were made to represent Him by bearing His likeness. Under God's rule, we lived in a state of wholeness or peace—shalom. God placed humans in a garden of abundance and told them to extend His goodness to the ends of the world.
Because God made everything, He is the rightful King of everything. His Kingship is good and perfect
We Have All Rejected God as King
The first humans did not believe that God’s ways were true and rejected God’s good rule over them. To prevent them from living forever in rebellion to God’s rule, they had to leave the garden of abundance and move to the harsh wilderness of the world. Living outside of God’s gracious kingdom, they experienced pain, suffering, disease, poverty, and death.
Creation itself declares much about what God is like; it seems only natural to worship God, the One who made everything rather than the things He made. Yet, humans regularly refuse to give credit or praise to God but give it to created things. All humans have followed the first humans in rejecting God’s good rule.
We All Long for the Good King
Humans innately long for the world to be as it was before they rejected God. We see this even in people’s attempts to build kingdoms that promise to bring us abundance and peace.
Unfortunately, our rebellion against God has made humans unable to rule or be ruled without sin corrupting our use of power, relationships to our neighbors, and the treatment of our enemies. We are incapable of recreating God's shalom and our vain attempts to imitate God's ways often make things worse.
God's ways stand in contrast to our ways. He is self-sacrificing, proclaims justice to the oppressed, comforts the broken-hearted, and loves the unlovely.
Jesus: God’s Good, Promised King
God promised He'd make a way to restore us to the abundance and shalom of the garden. He sent Jesus to fulfill this promise, as a Good King here on earth.
Jesus is unlike any other king. Since he is fully God and fully human, he shows us the kind of king God is. While on earth, He ruled in the way we were intended to rule: Caring for the lowly, not seeking earthly fame and success, and ultimately sacrificing Himself for us.
When Jesus was crucified, it was humanity's ultimate rebellion against God as King. Jesus' resurrection after three days is God's triumph over our rebellion. It declares that we can't defeat God's good rule–God has triumphed over all. And in this triumph, we can be freed from the consequences of our rebellion, which is our enslavement to sin.
No matter how much we have rejected God’s promised good king, Jesus, He remains loving towards us and continues to rescue us from all that human rebellion has caused. Jesus was raised and sits at God's right hand, ruling over everything in heaven and earth. The Kingdom has come in Jesus and is still coming as the church does God's will on earth as it is in heaven and will come in fullness one day.
Surrendering to King Jesus
To receive God’s triumph over our rebellion and be restored to wholeness and peace, we must surrender to Jesus. Surrendering begins when we confess Jesus as Lord, that He was raised from death to life, and is seated on God's right hand over everything in heaven and earth.
We acknowledge Jesus as King through repentance, faith, and baptism.
• Repentance is turning away from a life of rebellion against God as king to a way of life following Jesus as King. We receive God’s triumph over our rebellion through His forgiveness.
• Faith in Jesus is expressed as loyalty or faithfulness to Him as King and as a public declaration that He is Lord (Ruler).
• Baptism is the adoption ceremony into the Royal family. We are not mere subjects of the King but in the family. This ceremony pictures our old “rebellious self” dying, our cleansing from sin (forgiveness), being buried, and our new self as a family member being born.
Living with the Good King
Jesus, the True and Good King, dwells and reigns in and through us by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit empowers a new way of living. The kingdom of Jesus is not something we can make happen with external control. It is revealed through right living, peace between people, and joy in the Holy Spirit.
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