Spurgeon on the Gospel: "How does Paul put it?"

"Jesus Christ is the essence of the gospel: he himself is the good news, as well as the medium of it. The good news is that God hath sent his only-begotten Son into the world that we might live through him....Everything is brought out as a matter of fact arising from the actual life and death of the Saviour, and I am free to confess that I greatly admire this way of preaching the gospel. How does Paul put it? What was the gospel to him? Hear him: 'Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures; and that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve.' [1 Corinthians 15:1-5.] Thus, you see, Paul's body of divinity was the life and death of that only embodied divinity, the Lord Jesus. My brethren, always set forth the gospel in close connection with your Lord, fetching it, as it were, out of him."¹

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ENDNOTE:

¹ Excerpted from C. H. Spurgeon, "The One Foundation," The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1880), Vol. 25, pp. 523-525, italics his, ellipsis added.