The Beauty of the Gospel!

In this way, for my part, I am eager to proclaim the gospel to you also who are in Rome. Romans 1:15

When we think of the gospel, it brings to mind the message of hope. The gospel is the good news that Jesus Christ suffered and died for His elect. Furthermore, He was raised from the dead and sits at the Father’s right hand. He was the propitiation for our sins. The gospel saved us from our sins  and made us right with God. However, you may fail to realize that it is beneficial for every believer to preach the gospel to themselves every day. In Paul’s epistle to the church in Rome, he wrote that he was eager to preach the gospel to them.    Paul understood the benefit of proclaiming the gospel to unbelievers and believers.

I want to encourage you to preach the gospel to yourself each day. To help you do that, I want to recommend that you acquire a copy of the book A Gospel Primer by Milton Vincent. The following is an excerpt from the book:

The Glory of God-My God is immense beyond imagination. He measured the entire universe with merely the span of His hand. He is unimaginably    awesome in all of His perfections, absolutely righteous, holy, and just in all of His ways. He has also been unbelievably good and merciful to me as the Creator and Sustainer of my life. Every breath, every heartbeat, every function of every organ in my body is a gift from Him. Every legitimate pleasure I experience is a gift from His loving hand to me. All that I am and all that I have I owe to Him and to His goodness. My life in every way is, and will continue to be, utterly dependent upon Him in whom I live and move and have my being. This wonderful God is the most supremely worthy Object of admiration, honor, and delight in all of the universe; and He has created me with the intention that I might glorify Him by finding my soul’s delight in Him and by living in joyful obedience to Him in all of my ways.

My Sin Against God -Yet I could not have failed this great God more miserably than I have. Instead of giving thanks to Him and humbly submitting to His rule over my life, I have rebelled against Him and have actually sought to exalt myself above Him. Going my own way and living  according to my own wisdom, I have broken countless times either the letter or the spirit of every one of God’s Ten Commandments. Thinking myself to be wise, I have shown myself to be a fool; and because of my arrogance, God has every right to damn me to the everlasting experience of His terrifying wrath in the Lake of Fire. So as for myself, apart from Christ I am bound by the guilt of my sins and also bound by the power of sin, enslaved    to various lusts and pleasures. Apart from Christ, I am also utterly deserving of and destined for eternal punishment in the Lake of Fire, completely unable to save myself or even to make one iota of a contribution to my own salvation.

God’s Work on My Behalf-However, what I could not do, God did – and in doing it, He did it all, sending His own Son into the world to die on the cross for my sins, thereby showing me unfathomable love. God loved me so much that He was willing to suffer the loss of His Son, and even more amazingly, He was willing to allow His Son to suffer the loss of Him at the cross. Jesus loved me so much that He was willing to lay down His life for me. No one could ever love me more or better than Jesus. On the third day after Jesus’ death, God raised Him from the dead, thereby announcing that His death was completely sufficient to atone for every sin that I have or will commit throughout my lifetime. God then exalted Christ to His own right hand, where Christ now reigns from on high, granting salvation and forgiveness to all who call on Him by faith.

Your shepherd,

Pastor Mark