The Gospel Defined - Greg Laurie Devotion - July 14, 2022
Thursday, July 14, 2022
The Gospel Defined
“And they were preaching the gospel there” (Acts 14:7 NKJV).
What is the gospel? We know we should preach the gospel and live by the gospel, but do we know what the gospel is?
A literal translation of the word “gospel” is good news. Now, sometimes before we can appreciate the Good News, we first have to know the bad news.
Here’s the bad news: We’re all sinners. The Bible says, “For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard” (Romans 3:23 NLT). And 1 John 1:8 tells us, “If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth” (NLT).
If you’re sharing your faith with someone, don’t assume they’ll necessarily know what sin is. In the Bible, we can translate the word “sin” in different ways. We can translate it as “trespass,” which means to cross the line. Another translation comes from the Greek word hamartia, which means “to miss the mark.”
When the Bible says that we’ve sinned or missed the mark, it means that we’ve fallen short of God’s standard for humanity. And what is that standard? It’s perfection.
Are we perfect? No, we aren’t.
That is where Jesus comes in. Because God knew we could not hit this mark, because God knew we could not be perfect people, Jesus died on the cross for our sin. That’s the good news. Romans 5:6 says, “When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners” (NLT).
Here’s the first verse every Christian should memorize: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16 NKJV).
That is the gospel in a nutshell. Share it with someone. Let’s not turn the Good News into bad news by the way we deliver it, distort it, or leave out parts of it. Let’s deliver the explosive, dynamic, gospel.
Copyright © 2022 by Harvest Ministries. All rights reserved.
For more relevant and biblical teaching from Pastor Greg Laurie, go to www.harvest.org
and
Listen to Greg Laurie's daily broadcast on OnePlace.com.
Watch Greg Laurie's weekly television broadcast on LightSource.com.
Former cold-case detective Jim Wallace recounts the real-life details of some of his most extraordinary cases, gleaning insights about human behavior and biblical truth. See what investigating death teaches us about the meaning of life in this unique page-turner. A copy will be sent to you for a gift of any amount to Harvest Ministries this month.
