Today on Summit Life with JD Greer.

We think that we become righteous or acceptable in God's sight by acting a certain way,

but the gospel is the counterintuitive truth that you can never be righteous before God.

So God offers you righteous standing before Him as a gift,

not according to what you have done, but according to what Christ has done in your place.

Thanks for joining us here on Summit Life with Pastor JD Greer of the Summit Church in

Raleigh in North Carolina. I'm your host, Molly Bitovich. Today we're beginning a new teaching

series that gets to the very heart of this ministry. It's simply titled Gospel.

If you've been a believer for a while, you might think that you've moved beyond the gospel message,

but Pastor JD argues that we never move past the good news of the gospel. We should strive to move

deeper into it. In fact, getting deeper into the gospel is the key to the entire Christian life.

Pastor JD calls this first message, gospel-centered change. If this teaching resonates with you

and you'd like to share it with others, you'll want to visit us online at JD Greer.com.

But for now, let's not waste any time and jump right into God's Word together.

All right, I have two purposes for the message. So if you have your Bible, I want you to pull it out.

I want you to open it to John chapter 15. All right, here are my two purposes. First is I want

us to explore together one of the most important passages where Jesus explains how people change.

I think this is a question on a lot of people's minds, not just Christians. If you don't believe me,

just go into Barnes and Noble and walk into the self-help section of Barnes and Noble. It's like

half the store. How a fearful person can develop courage. How a person who is

undisciplined can develop self-control. There are books on how people who are fanatics or people

who are racist become tolerance. Everybody wants to know how it is you can change. Can you really

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