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The gospel is the ‘good news’ that through Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection we have received full restoration to God through no act or record of our own. In Jesus Christ, God has begun restoring beauty and dignity to all of His creation. By trusting in Jesus’ work on earth and His record with God we each receive deliverance from our pasts, hope for our futures, and strength for living today—no matter how good or bad we think we are or have been. This good news directs and saturates everything we do as individuals and as a church.
It has become common today to speak of ‘deeds before creeds’ and assume that man’s basic problem today is not a lack of good information but good living toward neighbor. While we cannot divorce how we treat one another from the message we bear, without the gospel the deeds that we do are stripped of relevance. We cannot reach God by the good that we do and it was necessary for God to come to us, in our condition, to free us from bondage that we might be set free to serve Him. We certainly do serve God and neighbor but it is in the light of what He has already accomplished in Christ and it is the joy of this News that impels and motivates everything we do.