What is the Gospel?

The Gospel is not Africa.
The Gospel is not welfare.
The Gospel is not morality.
The Gospel is not fair trade.
The Gospel is not education.
The Gospel is not healthcare.
The Gospel is not AIDS relief.
The Gospel is not cultural regeneration.
The Gospel is not repealing Roe v. Wade.

The Gospel is so much more important than all of these things put together. These things are all important, worthy causes, but they are not the Gospel. The Gospel informs our approach to all of these things and gives us a reason to pursue them, but it stands distinct from them and superior to them.

The Gospel is not of works. At its center it holds the one work that will ever save anybody.

A beaten, torn, and bloodied man, an innocent, the only one who ever deserved happiness, dying the gruesome death of a criminal, nailed hand and foot, suspended on a rough wooden cross-tree. The Lamb of God, our High Priest, taking upon Himself the sins of His chosen people, and offering his own blood as an atonement for all the sins we committed against Him.

This, and nothing else, is the Gospel.