What is The Gospel of God?

God made everything out of nothing, including you and me and everything was good. His main purpose in creation was to bring Him pleasure and reflect His glory, His beauty and excellency.

 

The chief way in which we as humanity glorify God is through loving Him above everything, obeying Him above everything, and enjoying Him perfectly. He made us to abide in Him, love Him and glorify His name. This applies to all. Also, God will bring every though and act to judgement, every hidden thing will be judged because He is just and Holy.

 

Instead of doing this, we have sinned against our loving Creator and acted in high-handed rebellion and hostility when we have forsaken and exchanged the glory of God. We looked for short-lived pleasure outside of Him through disobedience, lies and putting something of creation more superior to God, when actually we were made for Him. Our heart seeks satisfaction and they will always remain restless until they see God for Who He is. Only He can fill it as we were made to be satisfied in Him alone. But we became hostile to our loving Creator and His righteousness and made our own methods of righteousness and holiness and became isolated from God. Our identity in God got lost. Because of what we have become(isolated from God) it affects everything in relation to us and that’s why there is hopelessness, suffering, pain and death all around the globe. Our fallen relation with God started affecting horizontal relation to others who were made to reflect Him; we exchanged the true honor, glory, awe, respect, righteousness of God with our self-seeking desires through lies, hiding, deceit, hating God and the truth, boastful and pride, inventing evil ways, disobeying our relations/parents, devoid of holiness,  without understanding and faithless. We flowed down the river to destruction by our own will. We were made God-centered, God-cherishing, God-treasuring, God-dependent and God-exalting but we became corrupt, self-centered, self-dependent, self-exalting, self-worshipping, creating our own righteous standard to replace God's Holiness. We even thought we could do a lot of good and get justified in front of God, creating our own standard of justification. 

 

The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. God's Holiness and man's standard are different. For God, lust=adultery, hate=murder. God's standard are far above human standard. He is Holiest of Holy and perfect. Our best works in life are defiled with sin. Therefore, they can never justify us before the Holy God. God is not going to negotiate His holiness in order to accommodate us.

 

We knew God's moral law(conscious) and His righteousness, yet we neither lived reflecting His holiness nor glorified Him but our thinking became useless and our foolish hearts were darkened and sinned grievously against Him who loved us first. We loved darkness. Although we knew God's righteous law that those who live in rebellion satisfying the desires of wicked heart deserve eternal wrath as justice, we not only did immoral deceitful things but also approved of others who did it. We became God's enemies.

 

God is God of Holy Justice too. Will not the judge of all the universe be just? Who are we to say He is unjust? He has vowed that He will righteously and lovingly judge sinners. Sinners on whom is the justice of eternal death, where there will be no presence of Him or His love and endless eternal pain, cries, tears and suffering. There is no partiality in God as He is Holy and just.

 

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God continuously. Against You God we have sinned, rebelled, and done what is evil in Your sight so You are right in your verdict and justified when You judge.

 

But God being merciful, loving, patient, gracious, and just, sent His Own Son (who was always there co-eternal since before creation), Jesus Christ, came in the likeness of man to live as a man; fulfilling His perfect requirements in the place of sinners; loving God, delighting in Him, walking with Him, obeying, and enjoying Him perfectly without any sin. God had foretold everything about Him 400 years before He came. Bible contains over 300 prophecies of Jesus coming, regarding:
~being born of virgin mother(conceived of mother only without any involvement of husband),
~how and why He would die,
~His sinless obedient life,
~why He is raised from dead & how He is raised from the dead (empty tomb, many witnesses, bodily resurrection)

All of these prophecies have been fulfilled.
More than 1/3rd of Bible is prophecy and 95% has been fulfilled.

 

And further, though people found no proper ground for a death sentence, they asked to have Him executed [& crucified]. When people had carried out everything that was written concerning Him, they took Him down from the cross and laid Him in a tomb. His son took the eternal judgment of God upon the cross, as He satisfied the eternal anger and infinite wrath of God against sin, standing in the place of sinners.

 

God treated His own sinless son Jesus as a sinner, though He was perfectly sinless, that He might declare sinners as perfect when they see and savour the unmerited grace of God in Jesus.

 

This glorious transaction or exchange occurs as the sinner puts their faith (dependence, trust) in the Lord Jesus Christ as their substitute. God then charges Christ’s perfection to the sinner, and no longer views him as an enemy but instead an adopted son covered in the perfect righteousness of His son, Christ.

 

God furnished proof that this Holy sacrifice was accepted by raising Jesus from the dead. Jesus told about His bodily resurrection that after 3 days of His death He will resurrect and even prophecies were there. And when He resurrected after 3 days, He was seen by more than 500, among whom many women and men suffered and died horrible death to spread this good grace of God to mankind. That's why Christian persecution is rampant in that it speaks of man as sinful, helpless and unable to provide and reconcile himself to Holy, Just and loving God. Only through Christ the sinner is reconciled to God. God's gracious love revealed in Christ changes the heart of man to love God above everything which he otherwise could never do.

 

God will judge the world in righteousness and all of those who are not covered in the righteousness of Christ, depending on Him for forgiveness of sins, will be forced to stand on their own to bear the eternal infinite wrath of God.

 

God so loved the world that He gave His one and Only Co-eternal Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish and be condemned eternally but have eternal everlasting life with Him. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save and reconcile the world through Him only. Jesus bore our sins, not only sins but also the Holy hatred of God, all the justice of God against our evil was poured on Jesus. Justice can be satisfied by us spending eternity under the wrath of God(eternal death) or satisfied by perfect holy sacrifice with holy life in our place. God was pleased to crush Jesus as perfect justice and sacrifice for our sins. In end, Christ cried out "It is finished". He has paid. God is just and also the justifier of wicked people through His son. The Son of God absorbed justice that was upon us.

 

God allowed Christ's death to demonstrate God is fully righteous, Holy and just and gracious abounding in love & mercy.

 

In this is God's Holy gracious love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us first and sent His Son whom He promised, to be the propitiation for our sins. God raised Him to eternal life. On the cross of Christ is seen Holy Justice and God's mercy together.

Jesus died for you so that you might find forgiveness and come to know the living God.

We don't deserve God's love but His justice and infinite wrath. God doesn't owe us any love but unconditionally loves us first. Unless we see our sinfulness depraved heart in light of how Holy God is and what He has done for us, unless we see how much we grieve Him without sinfulness, we can never see His purpose in Christ and Christ's love for us through His Holy sacrifice. Our best works are defiled with sin. To the person who knows himself the thought is terrifying and he knows nothing could ever justify him in front of Holy God. The penalty of sin was satisfied through Christ’s holy sacrifice through which God extends His mercy to undeserving sinners who look to Christ for salvation. Only in Christ God's Holy Justice and His Mercy meet. Christ is the hope for worst of sinners and He is the eternal life with immeasurable joy.

 

God alone is unafraid of our darkest thoughts. He is the safest One to run to even when He seems silent, He has not abandoned us but lavished us with immeasurable undeserving grace in Christ; Christ who bought for us the gift of eternal life with God through His Holy sacrifice.

 

God is patient and loving with all, not wanting anyone to perish but to come to repentance and turn from their sins and see His overflowing abundance of grace and mercy in Christ. He could finish us anytime but He didn't but left us to live and breathe so we might see His overflowing love and grace for sinners in Christ. His sacrificial love for us bought eternity after eternities in communion with Him, abiding in His infinite love for us, infinite joy and His infinite glory, beauty and magnificence which surpasses all of His creation.

 

We are justified only by faith in Christ; trusting/ relying on His holy sinless life on behalf of us and His holy pleasing sacrifice to cover the justice for our sins. He is the eternal life, without Him there is no eternal life but the wrath of God (which bring eternal death) remains on us. 

 

God is gracious and compassionate;
Slow to anger and great in mercy.
God is good to all,
And His mercies are over all His works.

In Christ, God revealed to us His love, patience, mercy, grace, joy and beauty which surpasses all of His creation. If creation is beautiful how much more God is and this is seen in love of God in Christ.

The goal of all this overflowing love of God is to demonstrate who God is, how Holy He is and how much patient and forbearing He is with us and how much He loves us so that we may know Him, love Him, enjoy Him, desire Him and thus exalt Him, praise Him forever for all that He has revealed of Himself in the face of Jesus Christ.

This causes us to sacrificially love our neighbours and enemies the way He has loved us sinners and enemies.

 

Reference:

Gen 1:1, Gen 1:31, Eccl 12:14, 1 Samuel 12:24, Jer 17:9-10, Matthew 5:20, 1 John 3:15, Romans 1:18-21, Romans 1:32, Col 3:25, Romans 3:23, Psalm 51:4, Acts 17:30, Acts 3:19, 2 Peter 3:9, John 3:16-20, 2 Cor 5:21, Matthew 16:21, Acts 13:28-31, 1 Cor 15:6, Acts 13:38, Romans 3:25-26, Romans 5:8-9, 1 John 4:10, John 3:36, Psalm 145:8-9