The gospel of Jesus Christ is simply Jesus Christ Himself (Acts 5:42b; Rom. 1:1-3), with His person, His accomplishments, His attainments, His obtainments, and His work in this age, in the coming age, and in eternity as the content.
The person of the Lord Jesus is multifaceted and all-inclusive.
The Lord Jesus is the Creator (Heb. 1:10). All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being which has come into being (John 1:3). All things were created in Him, through Him, and unto Him (Col. 1:16), and He also upholds all things by the word of His power (Heb. 1:3).
The Lord Jesus is God. Romans 9:5 says, “Christ, who is over all, God blessed forever.” John 1:1 and 14 also say, “In the beginning was the Word...and the Word was God....And the Word became flesh.” Therefore, the Lord Jesus is the complete God who became flesh. He is the Son of God (John 20:31; Rom. 1:4a); He is the embodiment of God, the One in whom all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily (Col. 2:9); and He is the effulgence of God’s glory, the express image of God’s substance (Heb. 1:3).
When the Lord Jesus came to the earth, outwardly He appeared very lowly. Because He used the flesh as a veil to conceal God’s glory, men could not see that He was God’s glory. Yet He was the very embodiment of the most high God of glory.
The Lord Jesus is a man (1 Tim. 2:5). He is the perfect man, the Son of Man who was born of the virgin Mary (Matt. 1:23; Luke 19:10), and who, becoming in the likeness of men (Phil. 2:7), lived as a man. Men saw Him as a carpenter (Mark 6:3). He hungered, thirsted, rejoiced, became angry, and also wept. He was loving, compassionate, sympathetic, condescending, patient, and forgiving toward people. He was without sin; even He knew no sin (2 Cor. 5:21). He was a genuine man. After His resurrection, He was still a man (Luke 24:39-43); in His ascension He is still a man (Acts 7:56); at His coming back He will still be a man (Matt. 26:64); and even in eternity He will still be a man (John 1:51).
The Lord Jesus is the Redeemer. Matthew 20:28 says, “The Son of Man came...to give His life a ransom for many.” All have sinned and come short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23) and are under God’s condemnation. According to the requirement of God’s righteousness, without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins (Heb. 9:22). The Lord Jesus took on a body of blood and flesh, and He gave His life and shed His blood on the cross to be the ransom for many. Thus He satisfied God’s righteous requirement and redeemed us from under the curse of the law (Gal. 3:13). With His precious blood He redeemed us (1 Pet. 1:18-19; Rev. 1:5). Therefore He is our Redeemer.
The Lord Jesus is not only the Redeemer but also the Savior (Luke 2:11). Man has a twofold problem: on the one hand, man has the problem of the charges of sin against him before God; on the other hand, he has the problem of the sinful nature. Therefore, man has this twofold need: first, concerning the problem of outward position, law, and the charges of sin, there is the need for the redemption of the blood of Christ; second, concerning the problem of the old life and sinful nature within man, there is the need for another life, a transcendent life, to enter into man to save him from his fallen life.
On the one hand, the Lord Jesus as the Redeemer accomplished redemption for us by His death; on the other hand, He rose from the dead to enter into us to be our Savior of life. Romans 5:10 tells us that while we were enemies of God, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, that is, through His redeeming death on the cross. This means that the charges of sin against us before God were removed, and we were redeemed. This is the redeeming aspect. Romans 5:10 also indicates that, since we were reconciled to God, we need to be saved much more in the life of the resurrected Christ. This is the saving aspect. To be redeemed is outward, objective, and once for all; to be saved is inward, subjective, and daily for our whole life long.