The below is a transcript of the video.
At the heart of the Christian message is the Gospel which means “good news”. If you’re unfamiliar with Christianity, I’m sure you’ll have some questions such as “Why do we need good news?”. Beginning with the Gospel can sometimes be like skipping through the first few chapters of a book or the first several minutes of a movie. So, for us to understand what the Gospel is and why it’s at the heart of the Christian message, we need to start from the beginning.
The Bible begins with Creation. It tells us that God created everything perfectly. He created the first humans, Adam and Eve, to be the pinnacle of His creation and for them to enjoy a perfect relationship with God. Tragically, that relationship would soon be severed as Adam broke God’s law, he committed the first sin and consequently, the once perfect world would now experience death, decay and destruction.
However, the worst of Adam’s consequence was not death, decay or destruction but division, a division between mankind and God. Mankind would now be estranged from God forever. But just when Adam and Eve thought that all was lost, God promised hope. He promised that a Son, born from Eve, would defeat Satan and restore mankind’s relationship with God. And it is with that promise of hope, that the Bible begins its story looking forward to that Son who would bring redemption and restoration.
Unfortunately, several thousand years had passed and this Promised Son was nowhere to be seen. Death, destruction, decay and division continued to ravage the world and it seemed that God had forgotten his promise.
Then suddenly, at just the right time, Jesus, the Promised Son, was born.
The Gospels tell us that Jesus did what Adam could not do. He never once sinned. He kept all of God’s laws perfectly. He didn’t fall for Satan’s temptations. He even obeyed God all the way to the cross to die for the sins of the world.
Now this is where Christianity differs from other world religions. Jesus, the central figure of the Christian faith, God in the flesh, Creator of the universe gave his life for his creatures. Jesus, however, didn’t stay dead. He rose again after three days to prove that He is God, to declare that sin and Satan had been crushed and that death, decay, destruction and division had been defeated.
So, we pick up where we began. The Gospel is good news because the bad news is, just like Adam, we fail to obey God. We sin, we break his commands and we deserve to be judged by God, separated from God forever without hope. But the good news is that though we have failed to obey God, Jesus didn’t. Jesus lived the life we cannot live and died the death that we deserve, and it is only through Jesus’ death and resurrection that we have ultimate hope of redemption, restoration and a life that never ends.
And that hope can be ours, by placing our faith in Jesus – that is, believing and trusting in Jesus alone entirely to save us and forgive us from our sins. Have you put your faith in Jesus?
One of the Gospel writers famously puts it this way:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. – John 3:16
That is the Christian message.