What does it mean that the gospel is good news?

What, then, is the gospel? In presenting it the Apostle Paul wrote, “I delivered to you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ DIED for our sins according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3). It is the meaning and the results of the death of Christ that constitute the gospel.

(Vv. 3, 4). Immediately he sums up the glad tidings under three heads. First, “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures”. This brings before us the great propitiatory work of Christ for all the world, foretold in all the Scriptures, for the law sets it forth in figure, the Psalms present it experimentally, and the prophets announce it prophetically. Secondly, Christ was buried, the complete evidence of His death and the solemn fact that all His links with man after the flesh are severed. Thirdly, “He was raised the third day, according to the Scriptures”, the everlasting witness that the power of death is broken, the devil defeated, and God is glorified.

The Apostle carefully remarks that the gospel he preached, he had “received”, as we know from another epistle, “by the revelation of Jesus Christ” (Galatians 1:12). To reject his gospel is, therefore, to question the revelation of Jesus Christ and the authority of Scripture.

These two verses are the key verses of the Epistle. The great words of the doctrinal part of the Epistle are found here. Righteousness and Faith are these words; Paul declared that he is not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ. It cannot mean, what it is often said to mean, that Paul was not ashamed to confess Christ. It means that he had the utmost confidence in the Gospel of Christ; he knew it would not make him ashamed; he was not ashamed of it because of its intrinsic character. The world sneered at the Gospel he preached "for the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness" (1 Corinthians 1:18). He knew that in the Gospel was embodied the highest wisdom, that God Himself was its author, that it came from God and leads to God; he knew that through the Gospel the Greek, the Jew, the Barbarian could be saved out of the horrible pit and the miry clay and become a child of God and an heir of God. He was not ashamed of it for "the Gospel of Christ is the power of God unto salvation." What weighty words these are! The power of God is needed to save man. And that power God has, to save the vilest sinner through the Gospel of Christ. God is omnipotent, but in one thing God is powerless, He cannot save sinners apart from the Gospel of Christ, for the Gospel of Christ is the power of God unto salvation. The spurious Gospel of today, which denies the Cross of Christ and the blood, which substitutes character, good works or something else for faith in the Work of Christ as sin-bearer, has no power to save. God cannot save in any other way than the way made known in the Gospel of Christ, who died for our sins. And what is salvation? It includes the whole of Christ's redemption work. It includes Justification, Sanctification, and Glorification. Saved from the guilt of sins; saved from the power of sin; saved from the presence of sin. Salvation from wrath and eternal damnation; salvation from the power of darkness and sin's awful dominion; salvation unto eternal glory. The word includes all the sinner needs. The cross of Christ has supplied every need. If man had to do something with it and could help along in his salvation, it would be an imperfect and insecure salvation. But God being the author, it is His salvation and thus (Acts 28:28) it is a perfect salvation, a salvation which is both deliverance and safety forever. (Philippians 2:12 "Work out your own salvation" is often quoted as meaning that we must work to be saved and to stay saved. It means that we are to work out with results the salvation which is ours by faith in Jesus Christ.) And this salvation is to any one that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. Faith is the means of obtaining this salvation. Of this we shall hear more in the third and fourth chapters. Furthermore, in the Gospel "the righteousness of God" is revealed. This great word will receive our closest attention in the annotations of the third chapter. Here we briefly state that the Gospel of Christ makes known that the very righteousness of God, which condemns a sinner, is now on the side of the believing sinner. it is revealed from faith to faith, which means that it is not on the principle of works, but on the principle of faith.

CHRIST Himself is the good news. Philip preached Christ in Samaria (Acts 8:5), and there was great joy in that city (v. 8). "He preached Jesus" to the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:35) and he went on his way rejoicing (v. 39). May God help us to remember that our business is to "announce Him as good news." Romans 1:3 tells us that the good news is "concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord." It is not a doctrine we preach. It is Christ Himself. He is the good news. He is the living, loving Saviour.

On the other hand, in the same way that the word "Christ," used at first as a title in the sense of the Anointed One, became afterwards a proper name; so the pre-eminently good news, the good news of the love of God and of His intervention in the person of Christ to save men, is called "the good news," "the gospel." It is important that the reader, when he meets with this expression, should bear in mind the idea of a communication of good and glad tidings, as a message from God; and that he should also remember that the word εὐαγγέλιον, translated "gospel," is used to designate various glad tidings or good news. When, for instance, we read of "the gospel of the kingdom" (that is to say, of the good news that God was going to establish His kingdom on earth), this is quite a different good news from that of the intervention of God in grace for salvation. It must also be observed that when we find the expression "the gospel of God," the word speaks to us of God as the source of the good news; whilst when the expression is "the gospel of Christ," it is Christ who is presented as being the subject of this good news. Some other analogous modes of expression will not be passed unnoticed by the attentive reader.

Different Gospels. — A message of glad tidings was nothing new to God's earthly people. Of old their forefathers had been evangelized in the wilderness (Heb 4:2). To the dead, writes Peter, the Gospel had been preached (1 Peter 4:6). By the Lord Jesus Christ, when on earth, the glad tidings of the kingdom of God were carried to every city and village which He reached, as He journeyed from place to place accompanied by the twelve (Luke 8:1). But the Gospel, or glad tidings of the grace of God (Acts 20:24) was a testimony never proclaimed till the Lord Jesus had died, had risen, had ascended, and had sent the Holy Ghost. It is this which is called at one time the Gospel of God (Rom. 1:1), because it comes from Him; at another, the Gospel of the grace of God (Acts 20:24), because it tells of His grace; at another the Gospel of His Son (Rom. 1:9), of Christ (Rom. 15:19), of our Lord Jesus (2 Thess. 1:8), because it speaks of that which He has suffered and done for us. It is also called the Gospel of our salvation (Eph. 1:13), for by it we are saved (1 Cor. 15:2). To this Gospel was Paul separated. These glad tidings in his day were new; but, when received, were found to meet the deep need of a ruined, guilty creature.

Now God's GLAD TIDINGS DO NOT SPEAK OF YOUR FEELINGS OR DOINGS, but about Christ; the Gospel tells you what He has accomplished for you, and of the blessing you may have through Him.

He died for our sins. Having suffered the judgment due to them, He gave up the life in which He bore them, and with the giving up of that life the sins of all who believe the Gospel are gone out of existence. Our sins that would have come up against us in the day of judgment are gone as completely as is the life of flesh and blood in which Christ bore them. Our sins can no more be found than can a Christ in flesh and blood be found.

So also, if we appeal to the First Epistle to the Corinthians, we read in chap. 15 how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15:3). Now this is a great truth to lay before an anxious or truly enquiring soul. But you cannot apply it save in a vague and general manner to an unbeliever. You can freely say that He tasted death for every one (perhaps indeed every "thing"), Heb. 2:9. If He had not died as a sacrifice for sin, if He had not shed His blood as propitiation, there could have been no gospel to a guilty world. But it is when the soul believes God as to the efficacy of Christ's death, that the burden of guilt is taken away; for this has the surest warrant of God to every one that believes. Where faith is, we cannot exaggerate the assurance He gives to the soul.

However it might be, he was ready, and that because of the value of the gospel — a point which leads him to state both the value and the character of this gospel. For, he says, he was not ashamed of it. It was the power of God to salvation. Observe here the way in which the apostle presents everything as coming from God. It is the gospel of God, the power of God to salvation, the righteousness of God, and even the wrath of God, and that from heaven — a different thing from earthly chastisement. This is the key to everything. The apostle lays stress upon it, putting it forward from the commencement of the epistle; for man ever inclines to have confidence in himself, to boast of himself, to seek for some merit — some righteousness, in himself, to Judaise, to be occupied with himself, as though he could do something. It was the apostle's joy to put his God forward.

Thus, in the gospel, God intervened, accomplishing a salvation which was entirely His own work — a salvation of which He was the source and power, and which He Himself had wrought. Man came into it by faith: it was the believer who shared it, but to have part in it by faith was exactly the way to share it without adding anything whatsoever to it, and to leave it wholly the salvation of God. God be praised that it is so, whether for righteousness or for power, or for the whole result; for thus it is perfect, divine. God has come in, in His almighty power and in His love, to deliver the wretched, according to His own might. The gospel is the expression of this: one believes it and one shares it.