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What is the gospel and what would be considered changing it? The gospel is a simple message about God’s love to us as individuals that brings salvation. God loves you enough to tell you that you are a sinner. He loves you enough to have done something about it. The gospel is focused on the person Jesus, it does not involve a ritual, a ceremony but the message of what He did for us. The Gospel is Christ crucified. The Gospel is the “power of God to salvation” (Rom. 1:16). The gospel is always a present invitation, a now proclamation, not a tomorrow one (the Scriptures declare that today IS THE DAY OF SALVATION). The gospel that Paul delivered and we stand in is found in 1 Cor.15:1-4. It is centered on Christ dying for our sin and resurrecting. And Paul wrote in Eph. 2:8-10 how we receive it. By grace through faith. You cannot repent and confess your sins without faith in the atonement. In other words, you cannot come to God without the Son of God’s work on the cross. I Jn. 5:11-12: “And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.” It concentrates on God who became flesh (1 Tim. 3:16) and His work done on the cross to forgive our sin. This is obviously denied by the world’s religions and the cults. genuine faith to believe in the crucified savior. True belief will be followed by an action; your life willfully turns around after you understand why He went to the cross. The Gospel consists of three parts. 1) He (Jesus) died for our SINS 2) He was buried (proving He actually died), 3) He rose again, taking up the same body that He was born and lived in One can concentrates on a certain aspect like his death, or resurrection is not changing the gospel message. However, If they teach that Jesus died and did not raise from the dead physically then it would be eliminating the 3rd portion of the gospel.The Bible warns about adding or subtraction. If one adds healing or speaking in tongues or baptism to the gospel for ones to be saved they are changing the gospel message. If one communicates the gospel can be learned through nature, the stars or the pyramids they have mislead where it is found and how it is given. The gospel is preached and it is about Jesus according to the Scripture: It is received by hearing and believing it - by faith. There is no other work included. Paul and the apostles preached “the cross,” “Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). it is the “preaching of the cross” that contains “the power of God” unto salvation, because only by believing the finished work of Jesus on the cross can save us from our sins. 1 Cor. 1:18: “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.” |
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