Grace means unmerited favor from God—it’s His lavish goodness. Think of it as an acronym, GRACE: God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense. What Jesus did on the cross for you is enough for God to treat you as though you’re flawless, without sin.
How do I get right with God? How do I get to heaven? How am I saved? Most people would say you are saved by doing something, not by believing something.
But God loves you with an eternal love, and will take you as you are and make you His child. That’s the gospel.
After the resurrection, the gospel was going to non-Jewish areas, and Gentiles were believing in Jesus as their Messiah. Within the early church was a group called Judaizers. These were Jewish people who had become Christians but believed that the only way to be saved as a Christian was to become a Jew first.
This caused a problem early on in Acts 15, when some of them announced, “Unless you are circumcised and keep the law of Moses, you cannot be saved” (see v. 1). So the apostles in Jerusalem convened a council to settle the issue. But it wasn’t settled in the minds of the Judaizers, who kept working to sway people to their side.
They were undoing much of what Paul had done in giving the gospel of grace to the Gentiles and were bringing people back into bondage (see Galatians 2:4; 4:9).
They weren’t winning people to Christ; they were weaning people from Christ—and I find this to be a trend even today. Some Christians get so excited about Hebraisms, Old Testament theology, and Jewish rites, that they become legalistic—complicating things with religion instead of allowing the gospel to be simple.
Put simply, we are set free by God’s grace. We are justified by faith. We are made right with God through simply believing in Jesus. You can’t add anything to it. The moment you try, it’s no longer the gospel.
Paul said, “I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of Christ, to a different gospel, which is not another; but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ” (Galatians 1:6-7).
They were going back to bondage, back to legalism. He was shocked that the gospel was being perverted so soon. And this is a warning for us: If it happened so soon back then, think of the world we live in now.
There are only two religions: The religion of human achievement and the religion of divine accomplishment.
The first is “I am going to achieve it. I’m going to work hard to get it.” But the gospel is simple: God has already done it.
Jesus paid the price so those who believe Him are saved. That is the gospel.
