The Gospel
by Rod Jackson
The word the "gospel" literally means "good news".
Christians believe that all people are sinners. God is absolute and His moral standards are absolute. Hence if we are to be considered morally good in God's eyes we must absolutely keep God's moral standards.
This means we must keep God's moral standards all the time, every second of every day. We must keep them in our whole being - all of our thoughts, all of our words and all of our actions.
In short - to be considered morally good by God we must be absolutely perfect. But nobody is perfect. We are all sinners and we have all fallen short of God's moral standards.
Not only is God absolutely perfect but He is absolutely Holy. This means that God cannot "wink" at sin. He must judge sin or God would not be perfectly just. Since we are all sinners this means that for God to remain Holy - God must punish all of our sins!
Moreover since it is an eternal sin to blaspheme God. This means that all people are guilty of an eternal sin. And since we are finite beings our punishment must be eternal.
How can it be possible for sin to be punished and God to be merciful to sinners?
The solutions is through a third party. If only a third party could take the punishment of all the sins of all the people. But no mere mortal has this ability.
It would have to be someone who was infinite in their being, so that all the infinite sins could be placed upon them.
However it would have to be a person to take people's sins.
Jesus was God and man. He was both fully human and fully man. He was God in the flesh. So God became flesh and dwelt among us. Because He is God this means that Jesus was also perfect. So He absolutely fulfilled God's moral standards.
Jesus went to the cross where all the sins of the world were placed upon Him. Jesus took the punishment for sin of all those who believe in Him deserve!
Thus those that believe in Jesus are forgiven all their sins. Because Jesus took them on the cross. Thus in this way God remains absolutely perfect, holy, good, just and we sinners can obtain forgiveness!
But it is only through Jesus the Christ that anyone can be saved!