The Gospel in Three Minutes

[Note:  We affirm that salvation is given to those who both repent of their sin and believe in Christ alone.  In my message on Sunday, I inferred the act of repentance without explicitly using the word; I have clarified the statement below to include the necessity of repentance as a part of the act of faith.] 

While there is a depth and wonder to the gospel that provides lifelong meditation for the believer, the gospel is also simple enough to be understood by a child and can be articulated concisely — even in a matter of a few minutes.  Here is how I would say it in three minutes (for all the Scriptural supports for these statements, see the notes from the sermon, “Teach Us the Gospel”):

1. God is gracious and merciful toward mankind. He has made us to live with Him and for Him and He provides the means by which we can do that. 
2. Man has rebelled against God. We do not want to live for Him or live by His rules.  We want to live for self, not God.  Frankly, we want nothing to do with Him.  And worst of all, in this condition, we can do nothing righteous or good.  All the so-called good we do is in praise of ourselves and not God and is just more condemnation to us.  The only thing one can do in this situation is sin.  And there is no human escape from the consequences (judgment) against sin.
3. God is a gracious God but that does not mean that He stops being holy and just — and when He sees people living in sin, He not only can, but God must condemn and punish that sin. That sin is eternal separation from a happy relationship with Him and eternity in the most horrible kind of misery that we can know — Hell.  In Hell there will be nothing good of any kind, no compassion, no kindness, no friendship, no light, no health, no freedom from any kind of pain or sorrow.  And worst of all, we will be separated from the one we were created to know.
4. In His grace, God sent the second member of the Trinity to earth to take on manhood in addition to His deity. And as the perfect God-Man, Jesus Christ died for sins.  He didn’t die for His sins, but He died for the sins of those who would come to believe in Him. 
5. That means that if anyone believes that Christ died for him, he can be liberated from the penalty of sin (escaping God’s judgment) and the power of sin (being enabled to do righteousness). The way that we are saved is by repenting of our sin (acknowledging our guilt, asking for forgiveness, and pursuing a new way to live), and believing by faith alone that God provided and Jesus Christ did what we could not do ourselves.  It is a declaration that we no longer want our sin and we do want Jesus Christ.
6. And the object of all this, again, is to get us back to God. It is to restore us to fellowship with Him — so that we can be enjoyed by Him and so that we can enjoy Him.

If you are not a believer in Christ, will you declare now that you do not want your sin and that you do want Christ?

If you are a believer in Christ, will you tell this truth to others so that they can be liberated from their sins?

“The Crosses on Good Friday” by 50%ChanceofRain is marked with CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.