The term "the gospel" is thrown around, but what does it even mean? The word gospel means good news. Whatever the gospel is, it must be good news. Most messages preached in the average church are not good news at all. The most popular gospel is a false one and the word of God warns us in many places to beware of it and those who preach it.

The true gospel is the good news of the Person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, it is concerning who Christ is and what He did to accomplish the salvation of His chosen people (sheep, elect, His bride, His church, the remnant, etc.). The gospel includes the how and why, which can only be seen by God-given faith.

It is a message that declares how the eternal Word of God came down, took into union with His perfect Divinity, a human body of flesh (John 1:14) as He was born of a virgin (Mat 1:23). He was both God and man in one Person with two natures, divine and human, and was impeccable in His Person. He was the only human after the Fall of Adam not to be imputed with the sin of Adam. Christ was without sin.

He was born under the Law to perfectly obey and fulfill it (Mat 5:18, Gal 4:4). He did that, not for Himself, but for all those He represented, because they could not keep it themselves. Again, these were the same ones God the Father had eternally loved and chosen in Christ before the world was created (Eph 1:4).

His whole life of perfect obedience all the way up until He died the death of the cross was His whole work of obedience. He took on the sin of His people as both a Substitute and Representative for them. The Bible said He was "made to be sin" (II Cor 5:21) and the way that was done is by God imputing (legally transferred or charged to the account) sin to Christ. That means all the sin of all those people God chose was "laid on Him" (Isaiah 53:6). This sin was legally charged to His account and He then owned it in such a way to be legally guilty under the curse and condemnation of the Law for it all. It is a matter of strict Law and absolute justice.

God the Father poured out His anger toward sin on His Son and had pleasure and satisfaction (Isaiah 53:10) in doing so, in that, He was completely satisfied in Christ as a Sacrifice that met all the demands of the Law and inflexible justice of God. Christ completed the work of fully paying the penalty due to their sin debt and proclaimed, "It is finished" (John 19:30). He secured the salvation for all God’s chosen sheep that had ever, and would even be born. His resurrection is evidence of the acceptance of His sacrifice to the Father.

The combined work of His obedience to the Law and His obedience unto death on the cross was considered working out or establishing righteousness by the merit of His work. This is what one of the Old Testament prophets prophesied as "bringing in an everlasting righteousness" (Daniel 9:24) as Christ died effectually and exclusively for those chosen of God before the world began (Eph 1:4, Jn 6, Jn 10 & Jn 17).

This righteousness is what God imputes to His people the day of His power, under the power of the gospel, for the giving of life to believe in Christ. This puts them in a state or legal position called "Justification" and as a result they are eternally secure, without fail, in Christ, as He met all the conditions and demands of the Eternal Covenant of Grace between the Trinity, before time began. This is the gospel of grace (Rom 1:16-17).