The Gospel of Jesus Christ belongs to no man's religion...
It is the well-message of God's salvation to those who are His people.
The well-message comes from the Greek "euaggeliou"...
it signifies that those who are saved by this very Gospel of God are made whole from the sickness of sin.
In Matthew 9: 11-13, the Pharisees asked Jesus' disciples why He ate with the publicans and sinners.
His answer was...
"They that be whole need not a physician,
but they that are sick.
But, go ye and learn what that meaneth."
This Gospel of God is not given on any merit we have...
we have no merit to speak of.
We are depraved...
and...
"The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately wicked: who can know it"?
Jeremiah 17:9
In the original Greek of the Bible,
the heart is described as crooked from all and
being mortally ill.
Mortally ill...
in other words, dead.
We are sick unto death...
hopeless, helpless in ourselves to find salvation.
We are not able in ourselves to do
anything good for salvation.
The only hope is that the grace and mercy
of God might find us...
electing to save our wretched selves from the wrath of everlasting punishment for sins against God.
Because we are dead in our sins, only God can make us alive.
"For as in Adam all die,
even so in Christ shall all be made alive."
1 Corinthians 15:22
And, in Titus 3:5...
"Not by works of righteousness that we have done,
but according to His mercy, He saved us,
by the washing of regeneration,
and renewal of the Holy Ghost;"
May you find grace and mercy in the Lord.
