Returning to the Gospel · Session 1
A Scripture-centered teaching study. Read it here, or download the full manuscript below.
The Gospel, from the Greek euangelion, meaning good news, is the good news that God saves sinners by grace through faith in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Before we can identify where churches have drifted, we must first return to what God has clearly revealed. The purpose of this session is to establish a biblical definition of the Gospel from Scripture.
This study begins here because the Gospel must be understood before it can be defended. If the church does not clearly know what the Gospel is, it will eventually confuse the Gospel with good works, moral improvement, political causes, social reform, or cultural identity.
The goal of this lesson is not to minimize compassion, justice, or service. The goal is to place them in their proper biblical order: the Gospel produces good works, but good works are not the Gospel.
Before leading this session, read and meditate on:
Pray that participants would not merely learn a definition, but be renewed in their confidence in Christ and His finished work.
Keep Scripture central. The goal is a clear biblical definition of the Gospel.
Hold the key distinction throughout: the Gospel produces good works, but good works are not the Gospel.
Let the group surface their assumptions in the opening discussion before you correct them. People define the word gospel in many ways.
Aim for confidence in the finished work of Christ, not merely for information.
Ask the group: When people use the word gospel today, what are some different things they might mean?
Many people use the word gospel in different ways. Sometimes the word is used so broadly that it loses its biblical meaning. That is why we must begin with Scripture.
The Gospel is the good news that God saves sinners by grace through faith in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
This is one of the clearest summaries of the Gospel in the New Testament. Paul says he delivered what he had received. The Gospel is not something Paul invented. It is a message received from God and handed down to the church.
Christ died for our sins. He was buried. He rose again the third day. All of this happened according to the Scriptures.
The Gospel is centered on a historical person and historical events. It is not merely a philosophy, ethic, movement, or call to activism. It is the announcement that Jesus Christ died for sins and rose from the dead.
Romans 3 explains why the Gospel is necessary. Before Paul announces justification by faith, he shows that all humanity is guilty before God.
All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Sinners are justified by grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
If man’s greatest problem is sin against God, then man’s greatest need is reconciliation with God. The Bible does not deny injustice, but it goes deeper: the root problem beneath every human evil is sin.
This is also why the Gospel speaks the language of blood and sacrifice. In verse 25 Paul says God hath set forth Christ to be a propitiation through faith in his blood. A propitiation is a sacrifice that satisfies the just wrath of God against sin, and it reaches back into the Old Testament law, where sin was covered only when an innocent victim died in the sinner’s place.
At the first Passover, God commanded each household to kill a lamb without blemish and put its blood on the doorposts, and where the blood was applied the judgment of God passed over (Exodus 12). The whole sacrificial system taught the same lesson: the wages of sin is death, and God in mercy accepted the death of a substitute. Every lamb pointed forward. So when John the Baptist saw Jesus he said, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), and Paul says plainly, “Christ our passover is sacrificed for us” (1 Corinthians 5:7). The blood Paul names in Romans 3 is the blood of the true and final Lamb. This is why the Gospel is necessary: a holy God will not pass over sin without atonement, and only the Lamb of God could make it.
Christ our passover is sacrificed for us. Every Old Testament sacrifice pointed forward to Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
Ephesians 2 gives one of the clearest explanations of salvation by grace in all of Scripture, and it lays the pieces out in order. Paul begins with our condition apart from Christ. He says we were dead in trespasses and sins, walking according to the course of this world, and by nature the children of wrath. Dead is the key word. We were not merely weak, sick, or headed in the wrong direction. We were spiritually dead, and the dead cannot raise themselves.
Then comes the turn of the passage, in two words: But God. Paul says God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ. And he states the means plainly: by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast (verses 8 and 9). Salvation is God’s gift from first to last, received by faith, never earned, so that no one can boast.
Verse 10 then puts good works in their proper place. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works. Good works are the fruit of salvation, not its root. We are not saved by our good works; we are saved for them. The order matters: God makes us alive, saves us by grace through faith, and then we walk in the good works He prepared. Reverse that order and you have lost the Gospel.
Dead in sin, made alive by God, saved by grace through faith, and created for good works.
A church can feed people, clothe people, mentor people, organize people, and advocate for people, and still fail to preach the Gospel if it does not proclaim salvation by grace through faith in Christ.
The moment good works become the way we try to earn standing with God, grace is no longer grace and the Gospel has quietly become religion. Help the group feel the weight of those two words, But God. Salvation is a free gift to the spiritually dead, not a wage paid to the morally busy.
After His resurrection, and before He ascended, Jesus opened the disciples’ understanding so they could grasp the Scriptures, and then He summarized the message they were to carry. He said it was written, and it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day. The church’s message begins with two historical facts that Jesus Himself placed at the center: His death and His resurrection.
He continued, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem (verse 47). Here the risen Christ defines the content of the church’s preaching. It is the announcement of what He accomplished in His death and resurrection, joined to a call: repent and receive the forgiveness of sins in His name. Notice that forgiveness is offered in His name, not on the basis of human effort or social reform, and that it is for all nations, not one people or class.
This is the church’s commission in a single sentence. The message is fixed by Jesus, not chosen by us. A church may do many good things, but if it stops proclaiming repentance and forgiveness of sins in the name of the crucified and risen Christ, it has stopped doing the one thing He sent it into the world to do.
The Christ should suffer, rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all nations.
Jesus did not send His church into the world merely to improve social conditions. He sent His church to proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins in His name among all nations.
Keep this commission in front of the group as the measuring line for the whole session. Good works may flow from the Gospel, but they can never replace the message the risen Jesus actually gave: that Christ suffered and rose, and that repentance and forgiveness are offered in His name to all nations.
| The Gospel Is | The Gospel Is Not |
|---|---|
| Good news from God | Moral improvement alone |
| Centered on Jesus Christ | Political liberation |
| Rooted in His death, burial, and resurrection | Economic equality |
| The answer to sin and judgment | Community service |
| Received by grace through faith | Social reform |
| Accompanied by repentance | Racial reconciliation by itself |
| The power of God unto salvation | Activism |
| Produces new life, discipleship, and good works | Religious tradition, church attendance, or cultural identity |
A tree has roots and fruit. The root is what gives life. The fruit is what grows from that life.
Christ and His finished work are the root. Good works, mercy, compassion, justice, and service are the fruit.
Biblical Christianity: Christ saves sinners, sinners are transformed, and transformed people do good works.
Distorted Christianity: People do good works, society improves, and this is treated as salvation.
Before Session 2, read:
Write a short response to this question: Why does Scripture treat changes to the Gospel so seriously?
Scripture teaches that the Gospel is the good news that Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose again according to the Scriptures.
This Gospel addresses humanity’s deepest problem, sin before God, and it provides humanity’s greatest need, reconciliation with God.
The Gospel produces compassion, but compassion is not the Gospel. The Gospel produces justice, but justice is not the Gospel. The Gospel produces good works, but good works are not the Gospel. The Gospel is Christ crucified and risen for sinners.
We can affirm biblical compassion while rejecting any theology that replaces Christ crucified and risen with social reform as the church’s central message.
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