WHAT IS THE GOSPEL: THE FIRST WORD OF THE GOSPEL IS GOD Part 1

Send us Fan MailIn this episode of the Real Truth Matters Podcast, Michael Durham begins a foundational series in Romans 1:16–17 by asking a vital question: What is the gospel? Challenging modern assumptions, he argues that much contemporary gospel preaching has subtly shifted its emphasis away from God and toward man. While acknowledging humanity’s real need for salvation, this message calls listeners back to the apostolic gospel—one that begins not with the sinner’s predicament, but with God Himself. Drawing from Paul’s opening thesis in Romans, Durham contends that the first word of the gospel is not you or sin, but God—specifically, the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel.This episode presses listeners to reconsider where the gospel truly starts and what it is meant to produce. By rooting salvation in God’s righteous character, creative authority, and sovereign initiative, the message exposes how distorted views of God inevitably lead to distorted views of sin, grace, and salvation. Far from diminishing God’s love for sinners, this God-centered gospel leads to deeper worship, humility, and assurance, as God—not man—emerges as the hero of redemption. This is a sobering and clarifying call to recover the gospel as the apostles preached it: a gospel that magnifies God’s glory and grants sinners the righteousness they could never produce themselves.