https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV4Ipp0yp0o
The word gospel literally means good news. Yet somewhere along the way, time, bad ideas, and bad perspectives have caused us to lose sight of just how good that news actually is.
The gospel is not bad news with a tiny escape hatch at the end. It is not simply a ticket to heaven after death. The gospel is the announcement that Jesus the Messiah has come, has defeated death, has taken His throne, and is actively bringing His kingdom into the world right now.
That is why we need to make the gospel good news again.
Key Takeaways
- The gospel of the kingdom announces Jesus’ present reign and restoration of the world.
- Christian convictions about creation and human dignity helped shape science, freedom, and social reform.
- Grace is God’s transforming power at work, not merely a declaration of forgiveness.
- The resurrection launches new creation and makes Christ’s life available to believers now.
Table of Contents
- What Gospel Are We Proclaiming?
- The Kingdom Changes How We See the World
- The Fruit of the Gospel in History
- Why Science and Faith Are Not Enemies
- Human Dignity, Rights, and Freedom
- Do Not Let Fear Become Your Theology
- Mercy Is More Radical Than Vengeance
- The Gospel of the Grace of God
- The Resurrection Launched New Creation
- Expanding Our Understanding of Kingdom Ministry
- Receiving the Holy Spirit With Eyes to See
What Gospel Are We Proclaiming?
Try filling in the blank: the gospel of ________.
Many Christians might instinctively say the gospel of forgiveness of sins. Forgiveness is absolutely part of the gospel, but that specific phrase does not appear in the New Testament. Mark 1:1 calls it the good news about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Elsewhere Scripture speaks of the gospel of God, the gospel of Christ, and the gospel of grace.
But the description that appears most often is the gospel of the kingdom.
Matthew 4:23 says Jesus traveled throughout Galilee, teaching in synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness. Notice how the proclamation and the healing belong together. Jesus preached the kingdom and then made the world look a little more like it was always meant to be.
Deep down, we know sickness, death, abuse, depression, fear, and injustice are not the way things ought to be. They are signs of a creation that is broken and groaning for restoration. The kingdom of God is God’s answer to that brokenness.
Jesus did not merely announce that people could leave earth someday. He announced that heaven’s reign had arrived and that God was beginning to set captives free.
The Kingdom Changes How We See the World
The goal we assign to the gospel affects everything else we build.
If the goal is simply getting people to heaven, then faith becomes mostly about securing a future destination. But if the gospel is the invasion of the kingdom of God into earth, then salvation includes the transformation of people, communities, work, culture, institutions, and the way we treat one another.
Jesus is Lord now. He is not merely waiting to become Lord someday in the future. He died, rose again, sat down on His throne, and began His reign. That is unbelievably good news.
The kingdom of God is a present reality that we can enter. The kingdom of darkness is also a present reality, but the good news is that Jesus delivers people from bondage. The gospel serves divorce papers on the kingdom of darkness because we now belong to another King.
That means the church cannot settle for a fearful, defeated, persecuted-minority mentality that magnifies the power of sin and the devil while minimizing the authority of Jesus. Christ is alive. He is active. He is liberating people and nations. And He is not going to lose.
For more messages centered on Scripture, faith, and the reign of Christ, explore the Life Springs Church preaching video archive.
The Fruit of the Gospel in History
When Jesus proclaimed the gospel of the kingdom, He healed the sick. That is part of the kingdom. But we should not shrink the kingdom down to only one expression of healing or deliverance.
Christians throughout history have understood that restoring what was damaged by the fall includes using the gifts, wisdom, creativity, and reason God has given humanity. Work is a form of worship, but sweat and crushing toil are part of the curse. So when people developed water wheels, mills, eyeglasses, machines, medicine, and other technologies that relieved needless human labor and suffering, many early Christians celebrated those developments as signs of restoration.
The question was not, “Why should people work?” The question was, “Why should people be crushed by work when we can use the resources God has provided to make life better?”
This perspective has been explored by writers such as Vishal Mangalwadi, who has argued that the Christian worldview helped shape the moral and intellectual conditions in which technology and scientific inquiry flourished.
Technology as a Way to Serve People
Consider a community living near a powerful river and a hydroelectric plant, while women still carry heavy jars of water from the river every day. If electricity can pump clean water into homes and move waste safely away, why would we refuse to use it?
The point is not that technology saves souls. Jesus saves souls. The point is that the gospel gives us a reason to care about human dignity, suffering, freedom, and practical blessing. It teaches us that people are made in the image of God and are worth serving.
That conviction changes what people create, what problems they try to solve, and what kind of world they believe is possible.
Why Science and Faith Are Not Enemies
We often hear that science and faith are opposites, as though a Christian worldview is somehow threatened by honest investigation. But the biblical view of creation actually gives us reasons to study the world.
God created the heavens and the earth. Creation is real, not an illusion. It has order because it comes from a faithful Creator. The sun will rise tomorrow. Cause and effect are meaningful. Truth can be discovered because reality is not whatever we decide it should be.
If someone puts sugar water in a gas-powered car instead of gasoline, the car will not run simply because that person wants to create a different reality. The world has a real nature. That is precisely why experiments, observation, and repeatable results matter.
This does not mean Christians have always handled science perfectly, nor does it mean every technological development is automatically good. It means the Christian belief in a rational Creator and an orderly creation supplied an important foundation for believing that the world could be studied, understood, and stewarded.
Faith is not afraid of truth. God created reality. We can investigate it with confidence.
Human Dignity, Rights, and Freedom
The fruit of the gospel reaches far beyond personal religious experience. It has shaped the way societies think about human worth.
Before Christianity, empire was the normal pattern of political life. The powerful ruled because they had the power to rule. Caesar claimed ultimate authority. Peace was maintained through fear, violence, torture, and public displays of domination. Might made right.
Into that world came the declaration that Jesus is Lord.
That declaration has enormous implications. If Jesus is Lord, Caesar is not. If every person bears God’s image, then no ruler has the right to treat people as disposable objects. If God alone has ultimate authority, government itself must be accountable to a higher standard.
The modern language of human rights, constitutional limits, equality before the law, and the inherent dignity of every person did not arise in a vacuum. These ideas grew in cultures profoundly shaped by biblical convictions.
- Human beings have worth because they are created by God.
- People possess dignity that is not granted by the state.
- Governments do not have unlimited authority to crush human beings.
- Justice must protect the vulnerable rather than merely serve the powerful.
The horrors of slavery rightly offend our conscience today. Yet for most of human history, slavery was accepted as an ordinary engine of empire and economic life. The abolitionist movement did not emerge because people suddenly became naturally enlightened. It was driven in significant measure by Christians who took seriously the biblical conviction that captives should be set free and that every human life carries God-given value.
The gospel has been leaven working through the world. It has influenced societies even where not everyone has personally come to faith in Jesus. Like leaven in dough, it continues working, spreading, and changing what it touches.
Do Not Let Fear Become Your Theology
There has been a powerful story in the church for years: the world is only getting darker, the church is helpless, and Christians must retreat because the surrounding culture is too strong.
That is not the picture we receive when we look at Jesus as Lord.
Daniel was trained in the wisdom and learning of Babylon and Persia, yet he did not lose his faith. He rose to influence in the middle of powerful pagan empires without surrendering his allegiance to God. The question is not whether darkness exists. Of course it does. The question is whether the light of Christ is actually powerful.
Jesus is not intimidated by universities, governments, cultures, ideologies, or nations. The Holy Spirit has not become weaker. The gospel has not stopped being the power of God.
A victim mentality cannot proclaim good news with confidence. If our message is basically that evil is unstoppable until Jesus rescues us from a hopeless world, then we have accidentally announced the triumph of sin rather than the victory of Christ.
But Jesus is alive. He is at work today. He is moving in nations. He is lifting people out of bondage. He is changing hearts. He is bringing mercy where vengeance once ruled. He is not dead.
Mercy Is More Radical Than Vengeance
The story of Jonah is one of the clearest pictures of the radical mercy of God.
Jonah did not run from Nineveh because he was confused about God’s instructions. He ran because he understood God’s character. The Assyrians were brutal and wicked, and Jonah wanted judgment to fall on them. He did not want them forgiven. He wanted them destroyed.
That is where the battle between vengeance and justice becomes painfully real. Our flesh loves vengeance. We want evil people to suffer. We want to see the wicked get what is coming to them. But God’s justice is not the same as our appetite for revenge.
God sent Jonah to Nineveh with a warning because He was giving them an opportunity to repent. Jonah would rather disobey than participate in their possible forgiveness. Yet God pursued Jonah, redirected Jonah, used Jonah, and brought him to Nineveh anyway.
Then the people repented, and God showed mercy.
Jonah was furious, but the story reveals the goodness of God on every side. God had mercy on Nineveh, and He also had patience with His stubborn prophet. Jonah’s rebellion did not cancel God’s promise or prevent God from accomplishing His purpose.
That should bring enormous hope. If God could get Jonah where he needed to go when Jonah was willfully running the other direction, then God has not given up on us because we have messed up. His grace is greater than our failure.
The Gospel of the Grace of God
Acts 20:24 describes Paul’s mission as declaring the good news of the grace of God. That is one of the most powerful ways to fill in the blank.
We often define grace as God giving us what we do not deserve, and that is true. Mercy is God withholding what we do deserve. But grace in Scripture is bigger than a legal transaction or an intellectual declaration.
Grace is operative power.
Grace teaches us to turn away from ungodliness. Grace changes us. Grace makes us new. Grace empowers people to fulfill the calling of God.
Paul described the grace of God working in him to reach the Gentiles just as God’s grace worked in Peter to reach the Jews. Grace was not merely a label placed on Paul’s life. It was the active power of God accomplishing something through him.
This is why the gospel of grace is such good news. God does not simply announce forgiveness and then leave us unchanged. He brings power from on high. He begins new creation in us.
For more teachings from this ministry, including messages focused on spiritual growth and biblical application, visit the Pastor Mike Torres video collection.
The Resurrection Launched New Creation
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 that if Christ has not been raised, we are still in our sins. That should make us pause.
If the cross only means that Jesus paid a legal penalty so we can go to heaven after death, why would the resurrection be necessary for freedom from sin? The resurrection matters because the gospel is not only about a future destination. It is about new creation breaking into the present.
If there is no resurrection, there is no resurrection life. If there is no resurrection life, there is no power to live free from sin. There is no power for transformation. There is no new creation.
But Jesus did rise from the dead.
Death could not hold Him. The same power that raised Christ Jesus from the dead is at work in those who believe. That is not a small theological detail. That is the heart of the good news.
The resurrection announces that the old has gone and the new has come. In Christ, God has launched His new creation on earth. We are not waiting around for the kingdom to become relevant someday. The King has come, and His life is available now.
Expanding Our Understanding of Kingdom Ministry
Faithfulness to the kingdom absolutely includes praying for the sick, believing for miracles, and ministering deliverance in Jesus’ name. God still heals in response to prayer. That has not changed.
But the kingdom is not limited to one expression of God’s healing power.
When Christians use God-given wisdom to develop medicine, they are extending care to people who are sick. When counselors and psychologists help people confront fear, anxiety, depression, and destructive patterns, that can be a faithful expression of setting people free. When people create systems that relieve poverty, expand opportunity, defend the vulnerable, or restore dignity, they are participating in the life-giving work of the kingdom.
This is not replacing prayer with human effort. It is refusing to separate God’s power from the gifts, minds, compassion, and creativity He gives His people.
The goal is not to reduce the miraculous. The goal is to expand our understanding so that more life, more blessing, and more freedom can come into the world.
Receiving the Holy Spirit With Eyes to See
Jesus said He came to baptize people in the Holy Spirit. He told His disciples that it was better for Him to go, because the Father would send the Spirit. Jesus was passionate about completing His work so that the Holy Spirit could be poured out on all flesh.
So what happens when we ask for the Holy Spirit but feel as though nothing is happening?
Sometimes the issue is not that God has refused to answer. Sometimes we have created expectations so narrow that we cannot recognize His answer. We ask for something spectacular, dramatic, or highly specific, while God is already working in ways we have failed to notice.
Jesus taught that if earthly parents know how to give good gifts to their children, how much more will the Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him. If we ask, He gives.
That means the response is not endless striving to convince God to become more generous. The response is to ask Him to open our eyes and ears.
- Ask God to help you recognize where His Spirit is already at work.
- Study Scripture and allow it to enlarge your expectations.
- Reject the belief that unanswered expectations prove God is distant.
- Expect the grace of God to be active, transformative, and personal.
God is good. He answers prayer. He loves us. He is faithful to His word.
That is the journey: to see the amazing ways Jesus Christ is alive, to recognize that He is Lord, and to proclaim a gospel that is actually good news.
