You clicked the signature. Here's the full story.
What is the gospel?
Gospel is an old English word for good news. Christians use it for one announcement in particular: news about what God has done in the world through Jesus Christ.
Notice the word news. The gospel is a report of events before it is ever advice about your lifestyle. First it says this happened; only then does it ask something of you. That order matters, and this page keeps it.
I should be upfront: what follows makes big claims, and I won't pretend they're small. You don't have to agree with any of it. But I'd love you to know what Christians actually believe, from the Bible itself. The small brass references throughout open the passages in a new tab, so you can check that nothing here is being made up.
God
It starts with God, not with us.
Christians believe there is one God, and that everything else, from galaxies down to you, exists because he made it. The Bible's opening line is blunt about it: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
It says he made human beings in his image: made to know him, to reflect what he is like, and to care for his world under his care. Made by him, we belong to him, the way a song belongs to its writer. He is described as good, holy and loving. Holy is worth pausing on: it means set apart, morally perfect, without a trace of evil.
And because he made everything, he has the right to run everything. The Bible calls him Creator, King and Judge, and it calls his rule good. That is the world's original setting: people living gladly under the generous rule of the God who made them.
Us
We haven't wanted him as King.
Here the story fractures, and the honesty gets uncomfortable. The Bible's diagnosis of the human race, every one of us, is that we have taken the life God gave and used it to push him away. We would rather run things ourselves. We treat the Maker of everything as irrelevant, or as a servant to summon when life gets hard, or as an enemy.
The Bible's word for this is sin.
- Sin noun
- Our rejection of God's rule: the settled attitude that says “my life is mine”, and the thoughts, words and actions that flow from it.
Notice that sin is bigger than “making mistakes”. The individual wrongs we'd all admit to (lying, cruelty, greed, betrayal) are symptoms. The condition underneath is a heart that has quietly declared independence from its Maker. That's why comparing ourselves with worse people misses the point. “At least I'm not a criminal” does nothing about my standing with the God I've ignored.
“We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way.”
The Bible presses it all the way: “There is no one righteous, not even one.” Righteous means genuinely in the right before God. On that measure, every person is included in the verdict. Including the person writing this page.
The consequence
A good God takes evil seriously.
If God shrugged at evil, he would not be good. We know this instinctively in every other setting: a judge who waves through every crime is corrupt, not kind.
The Bible says God is patient and compassionate, slow to anger. And it says, just as clearly, that he will judge. Rebellion against him carries real consequences: guilt that is objective rather than just a feeling, death, and after death his judgment.
“… people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment.”
None of this is written with pleasure, and none of it is meant to frighten you into anything. But it can't be quietly edited out, because without it nothing that follows makes sense. Judgment is the dark background that makes what comes next astonishing.
Jesus
Then God did something.
This is the centre of Christianity, and the reason the message is called news. God did not leave the story where part three ends. He entered it.
Jesus of Nazareth was a real man in real history. But Christians believe he was more than a moral teacher. The Bible presents him as the Son of God: truly God and truly human at the same time. He lived the life the rest of us have failed to live, gladly under God's rule, without sin. And then, willingly, he was executed on a Roman cross.
On the surface it was one more miscarriage of justice. The Bible says something far stranger was happening: Jesus was dying for sinners. In our place. As our substitute.
Substitution is an everyday idea: a debt paid by someone else, a shift covered by someone else, a penalty served by someone else. On the cross, Jesus took on himself the judgment our rebellion deserves, so that guilty people could be forgiven and brought home to God. His death was more than a moving example of love. It achieved something.
“Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.”
Mark 10:45 Romans 5:6–11 1 Peter 2:24 Isaiah 53 2 Corinthians 5:21
The judgment we deserved
fell on him instead.
That is what Christians mean when they say Jesus died for you.
Risen
Death did not keep him.
If the story ended at the cross, Jesus would be one more executed idealist, and this page would be a eulogy. Christians believe the opposite happened. On the third day, God raised Jesus from the dead. Bodily. Physically. Out of the tomb. He was seen alive: walking, talking, eating, touched, by individuals, by small groups, and on one occasion by more than five hundred people at once.
The first Christians staked their lives on that event, and everything in this message hangs on it:
- It vindicates Jesus. God publicly declared him to be exactly who he claimed to be.
- It means the rescue worked. The debt is paid, and death itself has been beaten.
- It makes him a living Lord, not a memory to admire.
- It guarantees a day when he will judge the world justly.
- It gives real hope on the other side of death to everyone who belongs to him.
Lord
Jesus is alive now. And he is King.
The resurrection leads somewhere concrete. The Bible claims that Jesus has been raised to the highest place, that he reigns right now over everything, and that he will return.
“God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.”
Acts 2:36 · Messiah means God's promised, anointed King.
So Christianity can never be a hobby bolted onto an otherwise unchanged life, and it was never meant to be a self-improvement program. It is a change of ruler. Which raises the obvious question: how does anyone change sides?
Grace
You cannot earn this. That's the point.
Here is where the first word of my email signature comes back. How does a person move from part three, guilty and facing judgment, to being forgiven and welcomed home? Every other answer humans have come up with says: climb. Improve. Do more. The gospel says something different: it has been done for you, and it is offered to you, free.
You do not become a Christian by:
- being respectable
- doing enough good deeds
- attending church
- being baptised
- giving money
- becoming religious
- cleaning yourself up first
None of those things can carry the weight. Salvation, the Bible's word for this rescue, is a gift. That is grace.
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.”
Good deeds still matter to Christians, deeply. But they are fruit, not fee. You don't pay for a gift; you receive it, and it changes you.
Our response
News this big asks something of you.
The gospel is news, but it is the kind of news that calls for a response, the way a rescue boat pulling alongside calls for you to climb aboard. Jesus himself put the response in two words: repent and believe. Both need translating into ordinary English.
- Repentance noun
- A change of direction: turning from running your own life to recognising Jesus as your rightful Lord. More than feeling sorry, it is a change of allegiance.
- Faith noun
- Personally trusting Jesus and what he has done, rather than trusting your own record. Not a blind leap: it is confidence placed in a person, the way you trust a surgeon or a pilot.
Neither of these is a good work that earns salvation. They are the honest response to a gift already held out: turning toward the giver, with empty hands.
Two responses
In the end, there are two ways to respond.
You can keep going as your own ruler: run life your way, answer to no one, and one day stand before God on the strength of your own record. Or you can turn around: hand back the crown, trust Jesus, and live under his good rule, forgiven and at peace.
What doesn't exist is a comfortable third option. “Jesus seems wise, I'll just try to be nicer” sounds humble, but it quietly keeps you on the throne, and it does nothing about the verdict of part three. This news makes a claim on you, the way news of a cure makes a claim on a patient. Even ignoring it is a decision.
My own way
My own king. My own record. On my own, when the record is read.
Under Jesus
Jesus as King. His record counted as mine. Forgiven, and never on my own again.
Peace
And then, peace.
Which brings me to the second word of the signature. The result of grace received is peace with God. The Bible means something objective by that: two estranged parties, reconciled. The war is over. The person who was far away has been brought home.
“Since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Romans 5:1 · Justified means declared to be in the right: a verdict, not a feeling.
This is more than feeling relaxed, and it is no promise of an easy life. Christians still suffer, still doubt, still grieve. But underneath all of it sits a settled fact that doesn't move with your moods: nothing stands between you and the God who made you. He is no longer only your Judge. He is your Father.
Grace is what none of us could earn.
Peace is what none of us could make.
Jesus is why both are possible.
Where to from here
Christianity asks more of you than “did you find this page interesting?”. Jesus calls people to turn to him and trust him. But nobody should do that lightly, and certainly not because a stranger's website nudged them. Check it for yourself. Here are honest ways to do that.
Read about Jesus
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are the Bible's four accounts of Jesus' life, death and resurrection. They're called Gospels for the same reason the message is: they carry the news. Luke opens by explaining that he carefully investigated everything from eyewitnesses; John says plainly that he wrote so that readers may believe.
Either is a great place to start, and reading one takes about two hours. Less than a football match, for the biggest claim ever made.
Another explanation
Two Ways to Live, by Matthias Media, is a concise and widely respected outline of the Bible's whole storyline. If you'd like to hear this message told by someone other than me, start there.
Talk to a Christian
You probably know one. Most Christians would be genuinely glad to read one of the Gospels with you over a few coffees and take your questions seriously. Ask them. It's a bigger compliment than you'd think.
Find a church
If you'd rather sit up the back and listen for a while, that's a fine way in: look for a church that actually teaches the Bible. In Australia, the FIEC church directory is a good starting point, and any church where the Bible is opened and explained each week will serve you well.
You can talk to God
Prayer is exactly that: talking to God. There are no magic words, and no form of words saves anyone. Christ saves. But if you've understood this page and you want to turn to him, prayer is the natural way to say so. In your own words, or something like this:
God, I have lived as my own ruler, and I'm sorry. Thank you for sending Jesus to die in my place and rise again. Please forgive me. From today, I want to trust him and live with him as my King. Amen.
If you prayed that and meant it, tell a Christian you know. And start reading Luke.
So now you know what I'm wishing you at the bottom of every email. Not politeness. The two best things I know of: the gift, and the peace it makes possible.
Grace and peace,Rhys