Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand. 1 Corinthians 15:1
One day when I was in high school, one of the boys in my class asked me to explain the Gospel. I am ashamed to admit that I did a very poor job of it, although I had been saved for several years at that point. How well would you do it one of your neighbours or workmates came to you and asked for you to explain the Gospel? If it has already happened, you know the answer to that question. If it has not yet happened, you have a little time to prepare. It is surprising how difficult it can be to explain something that is so important to us, and we should all give ourselves a crash course on the subject. And we should always have a simple and clear explanation ready to give to anybody when we have an opportunity. Because there is much more to knowing the Gospel than simply inviting people to come to a Gospel meeting.
The apostle Paul spent some time in Corinth preaching the Gospel. Almost all of those who were reading his epistle had been saved under his preaching. Like us, they heard the Gospel and they responded to its message. Of course they understood the Gospel. So why was Paul taking time in his epistle to explain the Gospel to those people to whom he had preached it? He wanted to make sure they understood it well enough to explain to others, to have a good working knowledge of the Gospel. And the Holy Spirit wanted us to have the same. That is why Paul’s great explanation of the Gospel is in our Bible.
Although there are many thousands of good illustrations and explanations that help to make the Gospel simple to understand, we don’t need to know them all. Let me share with you one simple explanation that I have found helpful. Our Bible is full of valuable information. It contains thousands of things that we could learn. It contains hundreds of things that we should learn. But it contains only three things that we must learn. If we get those three things right, everything else will fall into place. Those three things are man’s ruin, God’s remedy, and man’s responsibility. Those three great themes are to be found throughout the Book. From cover to cover, we find them introduced and explained, and illustrated. But one thing that is critical about the three great points of the Gospel is that they are all 100 percent.
One thing that people find hard to accept is the reality of man’s total ruin. This means it is impossible for us to please God in our sinful condition. Those who fill their lives with good works and religious duty in hopes of pleasing God miss the point of our 100 percent ruined condition. For that reason, people fail to see the reality of God’s 100 percent remedy. The blood of Christ, and nothing but the blood of Christ, can wash away sins. And so man’s responsibility lies 100 percent in accepting his own 100 percent ruin and God’s 100 percent remedy.
Let’s not make the Gospel complicated, because it is not. We need to be able to explain it simply. And we can do that only if we understand its simplicity. -Jim MacIntosh