What is the Gospel? We quickly answer: It is the good news of salvation, the glad tidings of the gracious remission of sin through faith, which is in Christ Jesus. – The center of all Gospel preaching is Christ, as Paul testifies, “I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” Since the days of the Apostles there has been no other preaching by which the Church was built and spread in the world, by which sinners were converted to God and brought into the blessed fold of Christ, but alone by the preaching of this Gospel. In the Gospel God meets the sinner and offers him His hand of reconciliation, His free grace and mercy, the full forgiveness of all his sins, the life and salvation which Christ has merited. – When Christ our dear Savior died on the cross and exclaimed, “It is finished,” He had then finished the work of redemption for the entire sinner-world. Through the resurrection of Christ, God declared that He has accepted Christ’s work of redeeming the sinful world. Therefore, Christ’s resurrection is God’s declaration of the justification of the entire world of sinners, according to Rom. 4:25, “Who was delivered for our 0ffenses, and was raised again for our justification.”
Christopher Heidenreich, sermon delivered December 15, 1901
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