Good news captures our attention and solicits an active response. While we like good news, it is painfully absent in many lives. We hear a lot about bloodshed and violence. Television takes up close and personal to the vision of tragedy and mayhem. In this atmosphere of doom and gloom, good news shines like a beacon in the night. We are starving for good news and, when it comes, we are happy to receive it.
The gospel is good news! Gospel is a word that “originally denoted a reward for good tidings; later, the idea of reward dropped, and the word stood for the good news itself” (W.E. Vine). The gospel is the good news of salvation from sin through the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. The apostle Paul identified these basic elements of the gospel in his letter to the church at Corinth, saying, “Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I deliver to as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sinsaccording to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve… (1 Cor. 15:1-5). The death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ provides the framework for the gospel message. Built around that framework, the New Testament teaches us how to respond to the good news of the gospel.
Good news, by its very nature, demands response. Where we see insufficient response, there has been a failure to be sufficiently impressed with the glorious nature of the gospel. If we are truly impressed by the glory of the gospel, we will respond in a way that glorifies God. Failure to obey the gospel carries the penalty of eternal destruction (2 Th. 1:6-10). How can I obey the gospel? By meeting its conditions. The gospel is still good news even though there are conditions which must be met for us to enjoy its benefits. We will have more to say about this in next week’s bulletin.
— Glen Elliott —