In this video, Mark Dever provides a short explanation of the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ.
The following is a lightly edited transcript. Please check audio/video before quoting.
The gospel is the great news that we as Christians have. The gospel is the story that God is not going to leave this world in the mess that it’s currently in. God is going to, as it says in one place, make all things new (Rev. 21:5).
Now, that’s not necessarily good news to me unless I’m included in that. So, how do I get included in that? Well, I have to come to understand who God is, that I have a creator. I have to come to understand what he’s like, that he is holy and perfect, that he’s loving and merciful. But [I must also understand] that I have sinned against him. I’ve separated myself from him by my sin. And that in his love and mercy, God could have simply allowed me an earthly life with some pleasures and then let me fall forever under his judgement.
But in his extraordinary, amazing, unparalleled love, the Son of God has come and taken on flesh. Jesus of Nazareth was fully God and fully man, and he lived the life that I should have lived in perfect fellowship with God, and he died a death that I deserve because I haven’t lived a life in perfect fellowship with God. And then God raised him from the dead, vindicating all the claims that he had made about what his life and his death were about and were for.
Jesus of Nazareth was fully God and fully man, and he lived the life that I should have lived in perfect fellowship with God, and he died a death that I deserve because I haven’t lived a life in perfect fellowship with God.
And he calls me now to repent, to turn from my sins and to trust in him as my Savior so that that which I deserve I will not get, and that which he has deserved for me will be given to me. So, I have faith in him. I trust him.
And this is the good news. This is the gospel. This is how I can participate in that re-creation that God will be about that we read about at the end of the Bible. That’s just so marvelous, and that’s great news, and that’s the very center of what an evangelical church should be about and what every Christian’s life should be about.
