The New Testament has a good deal to say about the importance of being gospel people.
Paul’s letter to the Romans, for example, is a New Testament book all about the gospel and about being gospel people. In the first 11 chapters, Paul lays out the ‘gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures’ (1:1–2). It is good news ‘concerning his Son’ (1:3), the Last Adam (5:12–21), our only hope. And it is good news concerning ‘the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood’ (3:24–25). In Romans, we read that: ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;’ (3:10–12).
Yet, those lost in sin (8:7) can ‘be saved by him from the wrath of God’ (5:9). Sinners can be ‘justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus’ (3:24). Through the gospel, they can be born again, united to Christ in his death and resurrection (6:3–4) to enjoy no condemnation (8:1) and a new life, walking ‘according to the Spirit’ (8:4). Such people – whether Jew or Gentile – who heartily believe in Jesus become the true people of God, the people who have attained the ‘righteousness that is by faith’ (9:30; cf. 10:9–13).
