The Good News is that God has provided the way for helplessly sinful people to be given perfect righteousness and be brought into His fellowship with complete acceptance. Four basic components of the Gospel message include: God, Sinners, Jesus, and Faith.
A Holy God: God wrote a book so we could know Him. (The Holy Bible.) God created everything perfect, without flaw.
God only asked people to believe Him. (What we do is directed by what we believe.) God’s Person is the foundation of the Good News. Knowing God’s identity as the Creator and Owner of all things gives us the information we need to understand that He has every right to expect certain things of the people He has created. Knowing the goodness of God’s character gives us the foundation to understand that His absolute goodness demands complete obedience and requires certain indubitable justice. There is no good news unless there is knowledge of the person who has been offended, the justice of His cause, and the judgment that is due. He is perfectly righteous and requires perfect righteousness of the people He has created. His goodness demands that every injustice be righteously judged. Every wrong must be righted. God’s wrath against sin must be satisfied. Genesis 1:1-31, Genesis 2:1-25, Exodus 20:1-17, Job 38:1-41, Job 39:1-30, Romans 1:18-32.
A Helpless Sinner: There was a beginning to evil and there shall be an end. Each person has made choices contrary to the goodness of God’s character. Each of us is helplessly sinful. Every one of us has questioned God’s goodness and made decisions that show that we have despised the goodness of God’s character and laws, believing our way is better. Each of us has chosen our own ways over God’s ways. Each of us have demonstrated that we fall short of the standard of perfect goodness that God requires. There is nothing we can do to change what we have done, to avoid the consequences of our choices, to change the rebellious nature of our hearts, or to attain to the perfection that is required of us. We are already imperfect and unable to become perfectly righteous. We are unlike the goodness of God’s character. God’s judgement against our unrighteousness is certain, imminent, and just. Romans 3:10, 23, 6:23
A Sufficient Savior: Through God the Son, Jesus, God the Father has provided a way for helpless sinners to be restored to perfect righteousness. Having no sin of His own, Jesus willingly gave up His life, paying the penalty for sin on the cross and as a substitute for sinners. He died, was buried, and rose again from the dead the third day, proving that He had the power over death, proving that God’s wrath was satisfied, and proving that He is able to cover, in His own perfect righteousness, anyone who will believe Him. Jesus died for the sins of the people of the whole world. Acts 4:12, Ephesians 2:8-10, 1 Corinthians 15:3-11
1 John 2:2 “And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.”
A Personal Faith: We appropriate the righteousness that has been credited to our account by believing God. We simply receive the gift. We are clothed in the perfect righteousness of Christ by believing him. By faith in Him we become sons of God, children of Abraham, brethren of Christ, heirs of the promise, and ambassadors for Christ. It is not our own righteousness that makes us acceptable to God, but the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ that has been credited to our account by believing Him. You possess a gift by receiving what is offered. John 3:17-18, 36, 5:24, 1 John 5:9-13, Ephesians 2:8-9, Titus 3:5
He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him. John 3:36
And this is that testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. I have written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life. 1 John 5:11-13