Jesus said for us to go into all the world to preach the Gospel. (Matthew 28:19-20) But not only are most of us unwilling to leave the comforts of home to go preach; most of us are hazy on what the Gospel actually is! After all, if the Gospel is simply “Jesus died on the cross for your sins”, then there’s no reason for us to go. That ‘gospel’ has been preached the world over, and yet still Jesus has not returned. (Matthew 24:14) So obviously, something must be missing.
The apostle Paul once said that if anyone came preaching a different gospel, that person should be “accursed”. (Galatians 1:8) And a different gospel is what has been preached for centuries now, with different demonic doctrines being snuck into institutional Christianity to replace what Jesus actually taught. This is a big problem, and one of the main reasons why the church is so ineffective today. They’ve moved away from the true Gospel of Christ, and started preaching a counterfeit.
So just what is the true Gospel of Christ? Well, as churches around the world would tell you, it’s that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, and rose again from the grave. But it’s not JUST that. And, if that’s the only part of the Gospel you’ve heard, then you’ve not heard the full gospel of Christ. And, as the saying goes, half truths are lies in disguise.
No, we’re not here to refute the fact that Jesus died on the cross for our sins. But we are here to say that this was not the only reason Jesus came to the world. Jesus may have exemplified love through His ultimate sacrifice on the cross, but He also defined love through everything that He said and taught. In other words, His words are the missing piece of the Gospel which the churches have set aside.
The wonderful words of Jesus have the power to change the world. But only if we allow them to speak for themselves.
Jesus said that He spoke only the words which God Himself commanded Him to speak (John 12:49-50), that His words were life (John 6:63), and that He did nothing arbitrarily, only speaking what God Himself had taught Him. (John 8:28) In other words, you can’t separate the Man (Messiah) Jesus from His message (words). When you do this – as institutional Christianity has done with the Gospel – you don’t get the truth, the way, or life. All you get is a lie.
So, that’s the message for this article. The Gospel is Jesus – His sacrificial death, but also what He had to say. They come together as a package – you can’t separate one from the other. And if you’ve only heard one half of that package, then you haven’t heard the true Gospel of Christ. (But now you have!)
For practical tips on how to share the real Gospel with others, please check out our short video on how to do just that:
Reclaiming The Way 