By: Curtis Baker
As we begin our series on the letter of Romans, there is a question we must answer which will be very important to the rest of our study–“What is the gospel?” For those of you who have spent much time in church, you probably have heard the term many times before. If not, you may recall having heard it in some kind of religious context, but are not precisely sure what it means. In the original language that the New Testament of our Bible was written, the word “gospel” had a very straightforward meaning. Simply put, it means, “good news.” This is very important, because as Paul begins his letter to the church in Rome, he bases both his letter, and his call to be an apostle on the fact that he was “set apart for the ‘good news.'” (Rom 1:1) So it is worth exploring here for a moment what this good news is that Paul has based the whole purpose of his life on.
Interestingly enough, in the opening few verses of Romans 1, Paul gives us a few clues as to what he considers to be the “good news.” Whatever else we may understand about it, Paul helps us to see that this was something long predicted in the Old Testament (Rom 1:2), that it has mostly to do with Jesus Christ (1:3), and that the crucial part of all of it is the fact that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead (1:4). For those who know the whole story, these few references are enough to bring into remembrance what the “good news” is, but for those who are less familiar, we need to fill in a few of the details.
To understand the “good news,” we must first understand that the world exists in a state of constant bad news. I doubt this is any revelation to you. Only a quick glance back at your life and the life of those around you will confirm that we live in a world that is not as it is meant to be. No matter how charmed a life you may live, your life and the experiences of your life are touched by pain, loss, and death. No one escapes this reality, no matter how hard they may try, or wish it otherwise. The Bible helps us to understand why this is true about our life…it is because we do not live in the environment for which we were created. We were created “in the image of God,” Genesis tells us. We were created to work in partnership with God to subdue the earth and to develop it in conjunction with God’s wisdom and love. Most of all we were created to be in intimate union with our maker. But that union was broken long ago when human beings decided in their pride to be their own master.
This presented a problem for God. His just nature demanded that he punish humans for their rebellion and disobedience. This justice was not simply out of a sense of anger or rage, but out of the plain fact that if he left humans to be their own gods, they would destroy themselves and the earth that he had made for them to rule over. A just being could not let this happen! And yet his nature of love did not want to give up on his creation, because he loved human beings, and wanted good things for them, despite their rebellion. The great question of history then became, how is God going to, at one and the same time, be faithful to his nature as both a just AND loving being?
We do not have space for a lengthy answer here, but let us begin our study by recognizing the fact that because there is an answer to the question, that answer is the “good news” which world history is based upon. The good news is that despite our rebellion and many failures as human beings, God has made a way to both be just to his original intentions, and to not abandon us in our sin. The answer, as we will come to see in our study of Romans, is found in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is through him that world has not been abandoned; it is through him, and him alone, that you and I can be saved. More next week!
(Don’t forget to join me for A Message from the Heart radio program Sunday evening at 8:00pm on KJAK 92.7FM, or streaming live at www.kjak.com)
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