God’s Saving Gospel

Posted by anointedplace on April 27, 2010 · 8 Comments 

It is God’s gospel! It is His good news to sinners that we have the privilege of proclaiming. It is God’s good news because it is something He alone planned, announced beforehand and accomplished in His own perfect timing. It is His blessing to sinful men.

Those who were saved before Christ came in the flesh were saved by faith looking forward to His coming; just as we today are saved by faith as we look back upon His substitutionary death for our sins.

All of the prior revelations of God during the Old Testament times led up to and focused on the coming of His Son to redeem sinful man.

It is God’s gospel; it is not ours. He is the author. The good news God has been announcing to sinful man from the beginning of the human race finds its fulfillment in the person and work of Jesus Christ. It is our responsibility “to believe all that the prophets have spoken” of Him. “And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, He [Jesus] explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning Himself” (Luke 24:25-27). This is the key to our understanding the good news of God’s saving grace. It is the only way you can understand the Old Testament. It is also the key to our understanding the New Testament.

God saves believing sinners through the atoning work of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ that He announced “beforehand through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures” (Romans 1:2).  Our salvation is no accident. Our depravity did not catch God off guard.

When we embrace the Lord Jesus Christ by saving faith, God declares our sins to have been punished in Christ and imputes His perfect righteousness to our account. It is by faith in the completed work of Christ and God’s perfect gift of Christ’s righteousness to the believing sinner that gives us assurance that we will stand accepted before God in the day of judgment. It is not in our self-righteousness because it is sinful, like filthy rags. What saves us is the righteousness from God which is the pure righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ. Saving righteousness comes only through faith in Jesus. It is the very righteousness of Christ which God gives to us as a free gift (2 Cor. 5:21).

God can do it because Jesus took all our punishment for our sins upon Himself and paid for them in full so that our sins will never rise up again to condemn us. We can rest in His righteousness imputed to our account. That is God’s good news to us depraved sinners. The absolutely amazing thing is God planned it and implemented it even before man sinned.

God made us for fellowship with Himself. The sin barrier has been completely removed. God loves us and has reached down to save us through the divine saving work on the cross. We could never reach up to a holy and righteous God, but in His grace He reached down to us. He loves us and saves us by the death of His Son on the cross. Our sins separated us from Him, but God removed the barriers through His Son. The cross bridges the gap that sin and depravity created between the sinner and God. God now stands without stretched arms and bids us come to Him and be saved. Everything has been prepared and provided in His grace.

It is God’s saving gospel, and He will always fulfill what He has “promised beforehand through His prophets in the Holy Scripture.”

Has it been fulfilled in your life? Have you come to Him and confessed your sin and turned to God by faith in the saving substitutionary death and resurrection of Jesus Christ? The moment you repent and trust in Christ as your Savior, you prove the Word of God and His saving gospel to be true. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved” (Acts 16:31).

Selah!

Message by Wil Pounds (c) 2006

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