The gospel of Jesus Christ is the good news that guilty sinners are reconciled to a holy and just God through the perfect life, sacrificial death, bodily resurrection and ascension of Jesus to the right hand of God where he sits even now interceding for his people.
That’s a fairly packed sentence. But it only scratches the surface of the depths of the riches of the love of God in Christ and the glories of God.
The gospel is the greatest news in all the universe. That’s not hyperbole. It’s fact. It’s the news that’s too good to be true, except that it is true! It’s news that is too good to believe, that we won’t believe, nor do we want to, until the Spirit of God opens our eyes to its beautiful and all too good truthfulness, thus shedding the love of God abroad in our hearts.
I can’t help but think of Luke chapter 2, where an Angel of the Lord appears to the shepherds in the field at night to declare to them that Christ, a Savior, is born. The angel is preaching the gospel to these shepherds. Then after the angel of the Lord preaches the gospel to the shepherds, what happens? An entire host of angels appears and they begin singing, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to those with whom he is pleased” (my paraphrase). These thousands of angels are singing the glories of God in response to the preaching of the gospel. How appropriate.
But what’s interesting is that the gospel is not for the angels. There are fallen angels who have sinned and rebelled against God, just like humans did in the Garden of Eden. Yet, God did not become an angel to save angels, a much more noble creature than humans. Instead, God became a man to save mankind, a lowly vile creature stained with sin and marked by rebellion. That’s who God saves!
So the host of angels are singing of the glory of God in response to good news that is not even for them, and they do so because to some degree they understand just how marvelous and breathtaking the gospel is! Yet it is we sinners who benefit from the gospel. This hearkens to 1 Peter 1v10-12 where Peter essentially says that the angels long to look into the things of the gospel.
Do we long to look into the things of the gospel? Do we sing the glories of God because of what Jesus has done to save sinners?
If we don’t, and we don’t, it is because we need the gospel. That’s all of us. I am not afraid to say that I need the gospel. To say otherwise would be damning. It is an incredible privilege of grace to be one who is chosen out of all the universe to be a recipient of the grace of God in Jesus Christ.
May God open our eyes to the gospel and tune our hearts to sing his grace.
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