The gospel is the good news of salvation, or the good news of our Savior Christ Jesus. It is about what God has done for us in Christ before the beginning of time which has now been revealed to us in the life of Christ. It is good news because God has done for us what we could not do for ourselves. This is what grace means. It is an undeserved gift. God purposed to give us this gift of salvation before we were born, before history, before time, in eternity. God knew who he was going to save before any of us were created. This is called the doctrine of election. We are saved not based on our own merit, but on God's secret and hidden purpose of love and mercy. "For by grace are you saved through faith, not of works, lest anyone should boast." (Eph.2:8) Knowledge of this salvation should engender within us deep humility and gratitude, for it excludes all boasting or complacency. It brings us both peace and assurance, for we need not fear loss of salvation because it depends not on ourselves but on God's own eternal purpose of grace.

The early church determined that the Gentiles did not have to be circumcised and follow the law of Moses in order to be saved and accepted into the church. The yoke of the moral and ceremonial law was too heavy for anyone to bear. Peter told the Council of Jerusalem, "We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved." (Acts 15:11) Our salvation is a gift of God to be received through faith in what Christ has done for us not something we earn or deserve.

The salvation that was previously secret and hidden has now been revealed and made possible and actual through the historical and public ministry of Jesus our Savior. He did two things: he destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through this gospel.

Firstly, he destroyed death. Scripture speaks of three forms of death. Physical death is when the body dies. Spiritual death is the separation of the person from God in this life. A person can be physically alive but spiritually dead. Eternal death is the final separation of the person from God forever. Jesus came to destroy the power of death. He did not eliminate death in this life. We all die physically and will continue to do so, but he takes away the fear of death by the resurrection. But some will die the second death or eternal death. The final abolition of death is in the future, as the last enemy to be destroyed (1 Cor.15:26). Death will be swallowed up in victory at the second appearing of Christ. Jesus destroyed death by defeating its power, by drawing its sting. What does that mean? How did he do that?

For those who are saved death is simply falling asleep in Jesus. It is the gaining of a fuller life with Christ which is far better than this life. It is entering into a rich inheritance (1 Thess.4:14, 15; Phil.1:21,23; 1 Cor.3:22,23). Death is rendered so innocuous that Jesus could state that the believer shall never die (Jn.11:25,26). Spiritual death has been replaced with eternal life which is communion with God now that continues uninterrupted into heaven.

Secondly, Christ brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. It is by his death and resurrection that Christ abolished death. It is through the gospel that he now reveals what he has done, and offers us the life and immortality which he has won for us. Even our new resurrection bodies will share in immortality (1 Cor.15:42,52-54). So will our inheritance (1 Pet.1:4).

This gospel spoke directly to the fears of the ancient world of the first century. There was much dread, Angst in the face of the unknown hereafter. The fears are described by Achilles in the Odyssey, where he refuses to be comforted about death; "For I would rather act as serf upon the earth, yes, even with a poverty-stricken owner than reign as king over all the dead below" (Od.11:487f.). The whole object of the Epicurean philosophers was to rid people of two fears, the fear of death and the fear of the gods, which were seen as the two great obstacles to human tranquility. Epicurus's confident conclusion that the gods need not be feared because they do not enter into life at all, and that death need not be feared because it is extinction, nothingness, did not comfort the hearts of his contemporaries. The Gospel of salvation which proclaimed that God himself offered to all immortality in the future must have spoken very clearly to their longings. (Michael Green, The Meaning of Salvation, p.160f.)

Malcolm Muggeridge contrasts the dread of the unknown hereafter to the expectation of Christian believers.

So alluring did John Donne, find the prospect of dying that when he was Dean of St. Paul's [Cathedral in London] he had himself painted in his shroud so as to be reminded of the deliverance from life that lay ahead. Sleep, he points out, even just for a night, wonderfully refreshes us; how much more, then, will sleeping into eternity be refreshing. And then: One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And Death shall be no more, Death thou shalt die.

In our own time, Dietrich Bonhoeffer manifested a similar attitude to death, when, with his face shining in joyful expectation, he said to the two Nazi guards who had come to take him to be executed: 'For you it is an end, for me a beginning.' Likewise [William] Blake when, on his deathbed, he told his wife Catherine that to him dying was no more than moving from one room to another. As his end approached he sang some particularly beautiful songs, which he told Catherine, were not of his composition, but came directly from heaven." (Confessions of a Twentieth-Century Pilgrim, Harper, San Francisco,1988, 145,146)

St. Paul when writing these words is a prisoner writing his last letter before his execution. In the presence of his imminent death he can write confidently about the abolition of death and the promise of life immortal. This truth was something he was prepared to stake his life upon.

What about you? What is your attitude to death? What is your understanding of the gospel of salvation? Has Christ destroyed the power of death over you? Are you sure of your salvation on the basis of the grace of Christ before the beginning of time?

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