One of the church’s primary responsibilities is to train people to share the gospel.
Every follower of Christ should be “gospel fluent”.
The gospel is much more than a “plan of salvation, “the “Roman Road,” or “Four Spiritual Laws.” Despite how handy these gospel summaries are, the gospel is more than that. We short change ourselves by trying to reduce the good news to a few steps or points. The first apostles never did this, and neither should we.
The Book of Acts is a wonderful place to examine how the early church presented Jesus. We can learn a lot by studying the gospel presentations of those early disciples. In fact, I wrote a series of articles to help you with this, entitled, The Gospel in a Minute. I encourage you to take a look at it. It contains many insights and tips on how to effectively share the good news. I also recommend a couple of books that powerfully influenced me: The King Jesus Gospel by Scot McKnight and Salvation by Allegiance Alone by Matthew Bates. The links will take you to my summaries of these two important works.
The gospel is the proclamation of the true story of who Jesus is, what he has done, what he is going to do, what it all means, and what we need to do in response.
We have four gospels recorded in the Bible. Each contains lots of information about Jesus. John’s starts in eternity past. Matthew’s begins with Abraham, the father of the Jewish people. Luke introduces his gospel with the birth of John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin, who was the forerunner of the Messiah. Mark also begins with John’s ministry and shows how it set the stage for Jesus. Each gospel includes information about how Jesus fulfilled ancient prophecies, ministered healing and deliverance in the power of the Spirit, modeled how to live in dependence on the Spirit, taught the truth, proclaimed the good news of his coming kingdom, died for our sins as the Lamb of God, rose from the dead in power as Lord of lords, revealed himself with many convincing proofs, commanded us to fulfill the Great Commission, ascended into heaven, poured out his Spirit to equip and empower the church, and will return again one day as the glorious Son of Man to raise us from the dead and judge all mankind. His is an eternal kingdom. That is the gospel.
The proper response is to repent from our sinful way of living and declare allegiance to Jesus, the risen glorious Lord.
Water baptism is our formal and public declaration of allegiance the Lord Jesus. When we believe in our hearts that God raised Jesus from the dead and confess him as our Lord, we are saved. (Romans 10:9-10) All the benefits of his death and resurrection become ours – forgiveness, justification, redemption, reconciliation, and sonship. When are born again we become children of God. The greater challenge is to become a follower, a disciple, whose mission if to fish for people and make other disciples.
Every believer needs to understand the gospel and be able to share it competently. Imparting this knowledge and charging disciples with their responsibility for sharing the good news is the work of the local church. (Click here to learn more about the gospel.)
