Go into all the world
and preach the good news.
—Mark 16:15
What is the good news? Is it that God is a loving Father, not a hostile deity? Or that God’s grace, accepted by faith, brings his gift of salvation? Or that we get to go to heaven when we die?
Those are wonderful truths, but they are the fruits of the good news, not the good news itself.
The good news is that the power of sin has been dispelled by the cross—and that the power of death has been defeated by the empty tomb. The apostle Paul said that the things of first importance are “that Christ died for our sins . . . that he was buried, that he was raised” (1 Cor 15:3, 4).
The good news is the cross: Christ’s death—and the empty tomb: Christ’s resurrection.
The cross and the empty tomb—we can get by
with nothing less; we need nothing more.