The Gospel is the good news of the free offer of eternal life through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
The evidence of a living faith in Jesus Christ is love to God, love to one’s Christian brethren and love to one’s neighbour. Jesus said: “If you love Me, keep My commandments” Jn 14:15,23.
Faith must lead to good works, and prayer without repentance and a plan of action is empty words. We need prayer and action; action that needs prayer to be effective; action that will teach us and encourage us to pray in order to have God’s blessing on our work.
The Gospel needs to be distinguished from the social Gospel, which is a counterfeit gospel. The social Gospel misinterprets the Gospel as salvation by good works, or salvation by merit. Merit and grace are opposites Rom 11:6. Salvation is by free grace, God’s unmerited favour, not by merit.
This misinterpretation arises because social justice is the natural outworking of the Gospel, and social justice is mistaken for the Gospel itself. Social justice arise from the Gospel; it is not the Gospel itself.
Social justice is another way of saying that “faith without works is dead” Jam 2:20,26. Social justice is so important that Jesus taught that worship which does not arise from, and does not create Christians who are interested in social justice is vain, empty worship, which does not please God because it is devoid of proper content.
Update:
29 Jun 2016: the Free Offer of the Gospel.
3 Sep 2017: Too good to be true
In all seriousness, I like it! (the webstie I mean).Think the most attractive websties these days have very little wording on the main page but direct you off to the right places under icons etc. So think it’s a great improvement but we should have a lot less writing on home page just pictures, menus and straplines like FREE! . Anyway, thanks for this Mark and keep up the good work
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