The word gospel means the good news. The good news is that God the Father loves humanity and sent his Son to die to pay for sin (John 3:16), that his Son died and rose again on the third day and returned to heaven and now sits at the right hand of God the Father (Heb. 1:3), and that the Holy Spirit now applies the work of the Son to the hearts of his people so that they might be saved through faith (Rom. 8:9, Eph. 2:8-9). That’s the good news.
The gospel is God’s response to the bad news. The bad news is the fact that we have rebelled against God, who made us. God is good, holy, and just, and as a just and holy God, he must punish us for our sins. The Apostle Paul puts it this way, “the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 6:23). We have sinned and deserve death, but God offers us the free gift of eternal life if we repent of our sins and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.