Derek Thomas

confessional statement on the part of the early church.

Before there was a New Testament, how did the early Christians know what to believe?

And they formed little catechesis, little statements of

doctrine, especially doctrine about the gospel.

And one can imagine here, verse 4, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from this present evil age according to the will of our God and Father to whom be glory forever and ever.

And that sounds like something that could be a little sort of catechism statement.

What is the reason why Jesus came into the world?

And they would repeat something like this, and Paul perhaps is implying it here because he's formulated this statement.

So the first thing, Jesus gave himself, and then for our sins.

And Paul uses this little preposition, huper, in Greek, which is a preposition of substitution.

And it occurs fairly frequently in the writings of the Apostle Paul to describe the atonement, to describe what it is that Jesus did in giving Himself, in dying upon the cross.

He was dying in our place, who gave Himself for our sins.

that the atonement was an act of substitution in order to deal with our sins.

So, at the heart of the gospel is a problem, and the problem is sin.

The gospel addresses the problem of sin, first of all.

The gospel is not Jesus makes you happy or Jesus makes you content.

That's true, but that's not the gospel.

The gospel deals with sin.

It deals with transgression.

It deals with the fact that we've broken God's law, that we've severed our relationship with our heavenly Father.