‘The gospel’ can, ironically perhaps, be challenging to define concisely. It resists categories. It can mold to fit any scenario, and it has timeless, inexhaustible relevance. There is no era, conflict or triumph that it won’t speak into powerfully.

The gospel is something that enables and drives everything we share as a community — such as hope, the desire to gather together, service, prayer, celebration, heartache and disappointment. The gospel cultivates humility and wisdom; it promises healing and freedom; it meets us in the depths of sorrow and loss. It is the intrinsic meaning behind those things we find most true, most beautiful, most life-giving.

The gospel is the story of God coming to earth to redeem and renew, in a manner and through a means that could not have been—then, or now—more unthinkable, counter-intuitive, or radical.

The gospel (literally, the ‘good news’) is the reality that God entered history, walked among us, suffered, and died on behalf of humankind. For people who are broken and unable to heal or perfect themselves. For people who don’t deserve to be died for. But then God did the unimaginable— he rose from death.

And, by and through him, so do we.

In this gospel, all who transfer the weight of lordship from off of themselves and on to Jesus are promised a new identity, new life, and a new future.

In the gospel, we are empowered to venture into our own hearts and lives and see them as they really are. The gospel enables us to find wholeness and refuge in our dependence on Jesus as the sole means of our acceptance before God, and, remarkably, before ourselves.

Imagine a life where we could enter into our friendships far less motivated by being liked. What if criticism wasn’t so crushing? Rejection, not so condemning? What if you were less fearful, less defensive, slower to anger, and freer to forgive? If you were more generous, more patient, more hopeful, and more ‘other-focused’? What if your tattered edges were less embarrassing?

The gospel is the reality that we need a God who would die and live on our behalf, and that in Jesus we have one who has done just that—not motivated by obligation, but by love.

Through the gospel, we are freely given a new identity—an identity based not on race, social class, gender, self-performance, worldview, particular theological systems, or a catalog of rules and regulations. Instead, this new identity rooted solely in trusting Jesus redefines every aspect of our lives.

Because of the gospel, we no longer have to hide from exposure and project that we have it all together. Because God knows, loves, and enjoys us as we are, not as we pretend to be.

The story of the gospel is how and why we can be certain of and rely upon the love and faithfulness of a gracious God. And it’s capable of changing anyone, anywhere, at any time.

>> Learn about the hope of All Souls.