In my last few posts, I have written about different views of the Gospel. As I mentioned earlier, Christianity and the Gospel are closely tied together. In fact, I don’t believe Christianity would even exist without the Gospel. The Good News of Jesus was the foundation of the early church. It was such good news, in fact, that they could not keep it to themselves and shared it with everyone they could (Colossians 1:23). It didn’t hurt that Jesus commissioned them to proclaim this Gospel to the world (Mark 16:15).

This is why it is so important to know what this Good News is. If anything could be considered the Good News, Paul and the other Apostles would not have had a problem with the “different” gospels. But they did. Because in their understanding, there was only one Gospel. They weren’t confused about what it was—it was given to them from Jesus Himself (Galatians 1:11, 12). Yet, already in their day, distorted gospels were popping up among the believers.

A Sacred Balancing Act

We still suffer from different gospels because we often grab onto portions of the true Gospel and elevate them to an unnatural position. This results in removing or reducing key elements of the Good News Jesus gave us. As the main two distortions revealed, by elevating the importance of our works too high we reduce the power of the cross, and by making God’s grace impossible to resist we remove the power of our choice (and remove the severity of sin).

Yet, how could it be good news if I don’t have a choice? How is it good news if God’s payment on my behalf isn’t enough? Fortunately, the real Good News that Jesus gave to His disciples has a very balanced view of each of these. 

Works in the Shadow of the Cross?

To Jesus, and the disciples, part of the beauty of the Gospel was that Jesus sacrifice for our sins is more than enough. The author of Hebrews reminds us that Jesus “offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins,” and that “by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified” (Hebrews 10:12, 14—emphasis mine). The price for our sins has been paid. Our works are not needed for salvation. The Bible is absolutely clear about this: we are not saved by our works, but by our faith in God’s grace (Ephesians 2:8, 9). 

Our salvation is the result of this dependent relationship with God. In fact, Jesus said that eternal life is knowing (experiencing) God (John 17:3). Furthermore, the apostle John wrote we can know that we have a relationship with Jesus because we will obey Him (1 John 2:1–3). He goes so far as to say that if we claim to have a relationship with God but do not obey Him, we are liars (verse 4). Jesus made it abundantly clear: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). Our works are the fruit of this saving relationship, not a payment for it.

A Grace that Respects Our Choice

Another part of the beauty—the irresistible nature—of God’s grace is not that it over-powers our choice, but that it offers us a choice even though we don’t deserve it. We must not forget the truth about this: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). We don’t deserve any of this. God didn’t wait for us to get “good enough,” before He sent the solution. John 3:16, the famous Gospel verse, reminds us that God’s grace isn’t given to us because we deserve it—or even because we are lovable—but because He “so loved the world.” 

Yet our sin still remains. God’s grace doesn’t give sin a pass, but a solution! This solution isn’t forced though; it is still reliant on “anyone who believes.” The choice is still ours. In fact, before God offered grace, we had no choice! The earnings (wages) of sin is death. Before grace, death was our only option. However, now, because of Jesus’ sacrifice for our sins, we can choose life! This is what makes His grace so irresistible. How could we resist the unmerited favor of a God who loves us so much He would offer salvation (through His Son) to humans who are not worthy of receiving it? What love!

It’s All About Jesus

The problem with every distortion of the Gospel is that it ultimately focuses on us—or, at least, it plays to our selfish desires. Whether we believe that we can earn our own salvation or that no matter what we do we will still be saved, it is all about us. But the true Gospel is all about Jesus. We are not saved because we became “good enough,” but because He paid for our sins at the cross. Jesus dying for our sins didn’t remove our choice, it frees us to make a choice. That’s our part in salvation: the choice. Do we trust in God and rely on Him for salvation? The ball is in our court.

“And this is the testimony, that God gave 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 write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:11–13, emphasis mine). It couldn’t be more clear: if you do not have Jesus you do not have life, but if you have Jesus—hold onto Him, trust Him, follow Him, rely on Him—you can know you have eternal life. That is the Gospel, simply put.