The Simple Gospel, and Why Nobody Takes It Well

“Gospel” simply means “good news”, and Christianity works off some extremely specific news:

  1. God/Yahweh is the King of the universe (i.e., created and runs everything).
  2. All humanity rebelled against God.
  3. God requires just payment for that rebellion, which is death.
  4. God showed us the state of our sin and need for payment with the Hebrew law.
  5. God came as Jesus/Yeshua/Joshua to die for our sins as a perfect payment to fulfill that Law.
  6. Beyond payment, Jesus became the risen ruler and savior of humanity.
  7. Anyone who believes in Jesus’ sacrifice won’t permanently die.
  8. God has completely forgiven us of all our sins.

That’s really it. Many evangelistic approaches revisit it, but it all distills to that same set of ideas. Four (technically five) people bore direct witness for specific target audiences:

  • Matthew was a Jewish tax collector (effectively a debt-collector accountant) writing to other Jews. He wrote his account about 30 years after Jesus’ crucifixion.
  • Mark directed his account toward Romans and wrote it about 20-30 years after Jesus’ crucifixion.
  • Luke wasn’t one of the 12 apostles, and used a scientific angle. He used many testimonies to reach the highly analytical Greeks. His account about 31 years after the crucifixion.
  • John was a boy in the fisherman trade at the time and wrote his account for everyone. He probably wrote it from the island of Patmos much later in his life (~AD 90-100).
  • Paul was a high-ranking Hebrew Pharisee. He only converted after the crucifixion and wrote to the new churches throughout the Roman Empire.

The message’s scope and style was plain language and designed to be easily understandable. However, each of the above portions is at least somewhat uncomfortable to every human alive.

1. God made and rules everything

To start with, many religions’ views on God contradict each other, and the Bible clarifies the meaning of “God”.

  • Not Pantheism: God can’t be merely some energy or cosmic force in all of nature. God is distinct and separate from us.
  • Not Polytheism: Any other gods, alleged or legitimate, are subordinate to this God.
  • Not Deism: God involved Himself with this universe and not just a casual observer.
  • Not Scientism: God is open enough to design everything in plain sight but clever enough to hide the details.

Further, God has all the power. God is still capable of doing absolutely anything, even when He doesn’t act (Revelation 4:11).

  • The domain of miracles is easy for the One that created the universe.
  • Paradoxes about God presume limits of logic and order (e.g., could God create a stone He couldn’t lift?). God designed them.
  • In plainer terms, absolutely everything is within God’s system, so absolutely anything is possible with God.

If this was the only truth, everyone would accept some form of Christianity. We would only have to wrestle with the questions around the hardship we all endure.

2. All humanity rebelled against God

This allegation of rebellion is the first major offense. While most people can intellectually accept God’s complete control, they often don’t want to accept what that means.

Everyone, both within and outside the Christian religion, attests that the human condition has a sin problem. They may localize to certain groups, but everyone agrees that evil exists.

The Judeo-Christian creation story (Genesis 2-3) explains exactly where our sin condition began:

  1. The first man and woman were perfect and associated with God in the Garden of Eden.
  2. They implicitly trusted God so much they didn’t even know they were naked.
  3. God ordered them to not eat the fruit that would make them know morality.
  4. The Satan first tempted the first woman, then the first man followed in eating the fruit.
  5. God’s perfect attributes mean He can’t coexist with imperfection, so He exiled them from the Garden.

Even if the creation story is merely symbolic, its mythology still resonates with what we all know.

The question of when we become sinners doesn’t really change the problem. There are deep theological debates, which all condemn us the same:

  1. If we inherited sin from the first person who sinned, we’ve inherited the guilt of our ancestors (Romans 5:12-14).
  2. In childhood, we have all demonstrated a rebellion similar to the first sin. Every parent can attest to how their children have morally failed. It’s not simply background: there’s something deeply wrong with us.
  3. If we’re honest with ourselves, we all sin in our minds (Mark 7:21). We don’t see consequences for it, so we feel it’s justifiable.

Stating that we are God’s political enemy makes us bristle. We also don’t like our immorality revealed. This accrues as a further sin.

This, however, is not the most offensive part for most people.

3. God requires payment, which requires death

Quite a few people may be able to accept they’ve sinned, but they would likely hesitate from its consequences.

Since the above-stated Fall, our curse is distinct between the genders (Genesis 3:16–19):

  • Women must both endure extreme pain during childbearing and want and fail to take over the man’s role (Genesis 3:16).
  • Men must work very hard just to survive.

Our exile from God has also made us lose the implicit connection with nature we once had:

  • In our existence, most human experiences with God are outright deceptions.
  • We no longer have authority over other living organisms, and the laws of physics don’t serve our interests.
  • We don’t even connect well anymore with each other’s feelings and thoughts!
  • This may seem unfair, but it was God’s grace. If we remained in Eden and ate from the Tree of Life, we’d have stayed this way forever (Genesis 3:22).

And, we have a worse curse beyond exile. Humanity will eventually suffer permanent, complete death (Revelation 21:8).

4. God showed our sin with the Hebrew Law

The structure of the Law shows we can’t rebuild back to God’s presence:

The issue here for most people is the doctrine of hell.

Even many cultural Christians have trouble with the Hebrew Law. It’s simply too much for them to accept.

5. Jesus fulfilled the Jewish Law

If we can get past the Law’s severity and our present hardship from exile, God also made a promise:

  • He said He’d strike the Satan down later (Genesis 3:15).
  • The Hebrew prophets prophesy a Messiah who will establish a new arrangement (Jeremiah 31:31–34).
  • The word “gospel” itself draws from a Hebrew doctrine indicating that humanity needs saving.

The Messiah had to fulfill every prophecy while on earth (Psalm 40:7, Luke 24:44, Revelation 19:10).

Jesus’ existence was unique, even beyond what the Bible indicates:

  1. Jesus died by crucifixion, which is the most shameful and public execution possible, but they never found a body.
    • Keep in mind that the most powerful military unit was protecting it.
  2. After Jesus’ crucifixion, his followers behaved as if it wasn’t a hoax.
    • Almost every follower of Jesus believed they were real events against persecution, including high-ranking officials and tradesmen.
    • Jesus’ biological half-brother, James, had an experience he thought was a separate appearance of Jesus.
    • These experiences motivated people to leave their careers to deliver his message.
    • Paul, a prominent and well-respected Pharisee with absolutely nothing to gain from following Jesus, experienced what he believed was Jesus appearing, then converted to Christianity at a tremendous cost to his reputation and estate.
  3. 1-2 years after Jesus died, thousands of people followed Jesus and preached his story.
    • If Jesus was a successful scammer or magician, the hype would have died with him, or at least would have mostly died out.
    • Against all attempts to destroy or revise the Bible for 2,000 years, it keeps carrying on that same message across all languages and cultures.

6. Jesus became humanity’s savior and ruler

Our modern society has developed a very anti-monarch approach. Our current world power is a constitutional republic that balances against the “tyranny of the majority”. For the most part, we’ve idealized democracy.

Therefore, it’s very unfashionable to allude to a coming King who will eventually run everything (Revelation 19).

Deductively, the strange Jewish carpenter-turned-rabbi from 2,000 years ago creates three possibilities:

  1. He was the most successful con artist who has ever lived.
  2. He was utterly insane, but highly persuasive.
  3. He was absolutely the legitimate Messiah that he claimed to be.

However, most people find the story too remarkable to believe, so they don’t investigate further.

Jesus’ sacrifice gave Him title to the world (Matthew 28:18). History demonstrates that political changes of ownership always create unrest.

It’s an utter guarantee that Jesus will eventually come back to run things. This guarantees a power struggle and further renforces point #2.

While waiting, Jesus gave a plain command to believers to make spiritual apprentices everywhere (Matthew 28:19-20). Christian culture in general, though, has mishandled what they should be doing:

In summary, Christian culture has at least somewhat forgotten the Savior and King they’re dealing with.

And, finally, if someone can get past all of this, there’s a final challenge to unfold to become a Christian.

7. Belief means no permanent death

By Jesus fulfilling the Law, anyone who believes and follows Jesus will have fulfilled the law (Matthew 5:17). This “belief” is simply declaring Jesus is Lord and believing He died for your sins (Romans 10:9).

This has more depth than a cursory glance would show:

  • This means accepting He’s your Lord and Savior, to the exclusion of all other lords and saviors.
    • This must be a clear form of submission more than abstractly accepting the information (discussed in #6).
  • It also means believing that Jesus died. Therefore Jesus, as God, became a man.
    • This means that there’s no philosophical room for Gnosticism (i.e., discussed in #1, where flesh is evil and spirit is good).
  • And, lastly, it means believing God (specifically, Jesus’ Father) raised Jesus from the dead.
    • This means the definition of “God” is far less straightforward than we can understand (i.e., discussions about the Trinity).

This last part is why intelligent people have the hardest time accepting Jesus (1 Corinthians 1:27). It’s as simple as hearing His word and believing (John 5:24).

God promises that after this life, believers go to heaven (John 3:16, Romans 5:10, 1 John 4:9–10) and nonbelievers go to hell (Revelation 20:11–15).

8. God has completely forgiven us

However, the most difficult part for us to accept is that God’s grace completely forgives us.

  • This means we have nothing we can do to work our way to salvation: Jesus paid all of it.
  • It also means that others can have that complete exoneration as well.

This is a severe conflict among Christians, since we have trouble accepting the full implications of Jesus’ sacrifice:

  • It is true that believing and not acting isn’t really “belief”, but our efforts don’t determine who Jesus saves.
  • Praying a specific prayer shows our commitment, but only through our sincerity in praying it and not the prayer itself.
  • The baptism tradition is a symbolic act of devotion and not a condition for salvation (1 Peter 3:21).
  • Other activities like communion/Eucharist and honoring the Sabbath pertain to your relationship with God and communal experience. However, they have nothing to do with attaining salvation.
  • Speaking in tongues and baptism in the Holy Spirit are part of God’s work in us. They also aren’t salvation (1 Corinthians 14).
  • Some Christians (mostly Catholics) say purgatory will sort out unconfessed sins. However, that passage is vague, and in a book many Christians consider non-canon (2 Maccabees 12:39–46).

We all have immense value for who we are, simply because God made us.

  • We can’t gain God’s love any more, only His approval.
  • Even then, our most righteous actions are like biological waste (Isaiah 64:6).

The consequence is that we must repeatedly forgive and trust others, just like Jesus did to us (Matthew 18:21-35).

  • Since God also loves our worst mortal enemies, we must respond against our impulses for revenge (Romans 12:19).

But, There’s More

God will judge all sins in the Great White Throne Judgment (Revelation 20:11–15).

  • Our true and final salvation comes later, in the largest Court Hearing in existence.

However, God promises much more than merely entering heaven and escaping hell.

  1. All Christians receive the gift of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:16, 1 Corinthians 12:13).
  2. Jesus promises an abundant remaining life on this earth (John 10:10).
  3. Following Jesus is a living, dynamic relationship with the one true God (Romans 8:31–39).
  4. In response to your faith in Jesus, God will permanently change you into a new creation.
  5. God promises an eternal crown of glory through believers we bring to salvation (1 Corinthians 9:24–25, 2 Timothy 4:8, 1 Thessalonians 2:19–20).

And, to anyone with unresolved past trauma or internalized shame, this all seems too good to be true.