Passage Read: Luke 23-24
Meditation Verses: 24:46-47
Thought
The gospel is a message of repentance for forgiveness of sins in the name of Jesus. Jesus has power to forgive sins, and He paid the price in blood to purchase forgiveness for all who will repent and believe in and follow Him. It is not enough to "believe" that Jesus is the Son of God who died to pay the debt we owed for our sins, if that belief does not also bring a conviction that Jesus being God deserves our worship, submission and obedience; if that belief that Jesus being our sacrifice for sin does not also produce a rejection of sin and a self-denying devotion to Him. Jesus didn't die and set us free from judgment so that we could carry on in the things that earned our condemnation to begin with! He died and rose again to take away our sin and sin-corrupted nature, to set us free from the control of sin and give us a new righteous-loving nature. A gospel without repentance and a clear call to a changed life is no saving gospel at all, but an empty promise, a false hope.
Application
The gospel I teach and preach needs to be everything it always has been with a call to repentance at its core. "Unless you repent, you too will perish." Jesus' death and resurrection is the reason repentance now brings forgiveness. Without repentance, there is no forgiveness, because there's no agreeing that the things I once delighted in brought me condemnation, and these things I now must reject and turn away from, and I need to start learning and living how God originally wanted His people to live. That Gospel is the only Gospel that saves.