While the Gospel is a proclamation of pardon addressed to sinners without exception, an unlimited invitation to the guilty to take shelter in the blood of atonement, it is the power of God unto salvation, only to those who believe.
The Gospel – What is it?
The gospel is open to all; the most respectable sinner has no more claim on it than the worst.
There is one Gospel, and it is universal and applicable to all cultures. The Gospel is universally applicable because the one great need of all human beings is the same: they all need to be reconciled with the Creator.
Who Will Be Saved? Edited by: House, Paul and Thornbury, Gregory, Crossway, 2000, p. 185.
On the one hand, Christianity is the most exclusive religion imaginable. It insists that belief in Jesus Christ is absolutely necessary for salvation. Jesus is the only way. You must go to Him to get eternal life. On the other hand, Christianity is the most inclusive religion possible because it makes salvation accessible to everyone. Salvation is offered for all people through one Person. Whoever believes in Him will not perish. Anyone who receives or believes in Jesus will live forever with God. There are no racial, social, intellectual, or economic criteria that prevent anyone from joining God’s family. One of the problems with the other religions of the world is that they all smack of elitism… Only Christianity offers salvation to everyone as a free gift.
Is Jesus the Only Way? Crossway, 1999, p. 36-37.
Universalism, fashionable as it is today, is incompatible with the teaching of Christ and His apostles, and is a deadly enemy of evangelism. The true universalism of the Bible is the call to universal evangelism in obedience to Christ’s universal commission. It is the conviction that not all men will be saved in the end, but that all men must hear the gospel of salvation before the end.
Quoted in: Who Will Be Saved? Edited by: House, Paul and Thornbury, Gregory, Crossway, 2000, p. 104.
Moreover, it is the promise of the gospel that whoever believes in Christ crucified shall not perish but have eternal life. His promise, together with the command to repent and believe, ought to be announced and declared without differentiation or discrimination to all nations and people, to whom God in His good pleasure sends the gospel.
The Canons of Dort, The Second Main Point of Doctrine: Christ’s Death and Human Redemption Through It. Article 5- The Mandate to Proclaim the Gospel to All.