What is the Gospel?

My husband and I have been talking about the gospel. He just returned from a conference called, Together For The Gospel. It was beyond excellent! It, along with some books we've been reading (Romans, Galatians, Christ Our Mediator, and The Cross-Centered Life1,) has caused us to realize how easy it is to forget the most important thing. Our sin is so great that we deserve to have God's wrath poured out on us. Yet Jesus drank the cup of God's wrath to the dregs for us. We taught the following song to our five year old and the words are something worth meditating on,

The Gospel Song
Words:Drew Jones
Music:Bob Kauflin

Holy God, in love, became
perfect Man to bear my blame.
On the cross he took my sin.
By his death I live again.

(If you want to hear a sample of the song click here and scroll down to The Gospel Song and click on one of the players.)

One of the things that has struck me about the song is that it says blame instead of shame in the second line. So much of Christianity today focuses on how good God makes us feel and leaves out the main thing. He took our blame. Do we really realize that our sin was so heinous that we deserve to die? He took our blame. The innocent one took our blame. I think the reason so many of us do not consider our sin to be great is because we compare ourselves to other sinners. But that is not how God judges us. He judges us according to his righteousness. This is why we are all to blame. My sin cost more than I could ever pay. Jesus took the blame and bore in his own body my sin, and God poured out his wrath upon him. Jesus is my substitute. This is the gospel- Jesus died for my sin. So, now I am free from God's wrath. This is better than being free from shame.

1 Of course I do not put all these books in the same category. Romans and Galatians are the infallible word of God, and the other two books are by CJ Mahaney.