The Gospel, or "good news," is Christianity's basic message. Briefly, it consists of three points:

1. We were created by God in order to be in relationship with him.
2. We have broken that relationship by doing evil things and rejecting God.
3. God has provided a way to repair this relationship, by paying the penalty we should have paid for our wrongdoing and offering forgiveness to us.

The good news is an answer to the bad news that we deserve punishment for all the things we've done wrong. God's forgiveness saves us from being punished, which is why Christians often talk about "salvation" and "being saved."

1. We were created by God in order to be in relationship with him.

God created each of us and loves each of us. He wants us to choose to love him and to do good, in part so that he can bless us.

2. We have broken that relationship by doing evil things and rejecting God.

We all do things that we know are wrong. No one claims to be perfect, because we all know that we have lied, cheated, been rude or hurtful or done something else that's wrong. Aside from that, no one has done all the good things they ought to do; we have all wasted time and money instead of donating to charity or volunteering to help others. We have fallen short of God's standard - in Christian terminology, we have sinned against God ("sin" refers to wrongdoing).

God is good, just and morally perfect. Though he loves us, he hates the evil things we do, because he is good and hates evil. When we choose to do evil over good,

• We are rejecting God, because he is perfectly good and we're rejecting good
• We are doing things God hates and is morally obliged to condemn
• We are disobeying God, because he wants us to do good

Therefore, doing wrong distances us from God and harms our relationship with him. If we continue in this state, we will die and be separated from God forever: justice obliges God to punish us for what we've done wrong, and God's purity would be violated if evildoers were to live with him in heaven.

3. God has provided a way out.

God doesn't want to punish us, any more than we want to be punished. Yet evil is a serious matter, and his justice and goodness demand that he acknowledge its gravity by punishing it.

Because God loves us so much, he resolved this dilemma by taking our punishment on himself. God exists as three Persons (this is known as the Trinity), two of whom are God the Father and God the Son. God the Son took on human form and became known to us as Jesus Christ. Jesus lived a perfect, sinless life and then took our wrongs on himself and died. Jesus' death thus served as a substitutionary punishment for our wrongs: God both punished sin as God the Father and bore the punishment himself as God the Son. God the Father then raised Jesus from the dead, for all evil had now been punished and God could extend his offer of forgiveness to everyone.

This forgiveness is not automatic. In order to be forgiven, one has to realize that one has done wrong, repent of it and ask God for forgiveness. When someone repents of doing wrong, accepts God's forgiveness by accepting that Jesus Christ is their God and their Savior (the one who has saved them from their evil) and pledges to follow God, then they are reconciled to God - the broken relationship has been repaired, and they are now a Christian.

See also the Four Spiritual Laws booklet from Campus Crusade for Christ.