If it comes to a question of “what’s the point”, your friend need not start with us but with Jesus, since the sheep in the parable had no idea that they had been serving Christ at all!–yet Jesus says they had been serving Him faithfully and welcomes them in anyway with honor. It’s the people who were surprised to learn they hadn’t been serving Christ who are in trouble.
Be that as it may. At root the question is one of cooperation with God or rebellion, and sooner or later that becomes a question of Jesus’ identity, thus a question of cooperating with Jesus. More truth is better than less truth, and if Jesus either is God or at least the chief agent of God then it’s proportionately important to be working with and not against Him (even though He’s willing to be charitable about that).
If those are established (that we should cooperate with God and that we should cooperate with Jesus) then when it comes to our sins what are we doing? – are we renouncing our sins and asking God to save us from our sins? Are we trusting in God to save us from our sins? Are we comporting ourselves to obey and cooperate with God? If we are doing these things and Jesus is centrally involved, especially if Jesus is the action of God Who is God Himself, we had better be seeking salvation from our sins from the one and only ultimate source of salvation from sin.
Therefore I confess Jesus as my Lord and as my Savior, and trust Him to save me from my sins – and not only to save me but to save the whole world. If I deny the Lord God saves other people from their sins, I would be denying the name of Jesus (“The Lord Saves”)! – and if I deny the Lord saves, then how can I be saved!?
As to what difference the gospel makes, it’s still rather astonishing news that the one and only foundational ground of all reality is not only actively personal but is personally interested in saving those who act against the ground of their existence – so much interested that this God Most High sacrifices Himself for the sake of His own enemies to save them from their rebellion. There really isn’t anything else like it in any theology or philosophy I know of, and i sadly find that even people who know and believe this are routinely astonished to learn that such a God really is essentially love, really is an active fulfillment of fair-togetherness between persons. That not only makes a difference in how we learn we ought to behave toward other people ourselves, it makes a huge difference (once people work out the implications) in how we ought to expect this God to act in saving His enemies: not only some but all enemies, and not only for a limited time but always, and not with possible failure but with certain eventual success.
(Which not incidentally is why I find that non-universalists, even when they are dedicated Christian trinitarians, always sooner or later end up inadvertently denying some point of trinitarian theism. Which I wouldn’t mind so much except that the fruit of this denial, a gospel of some kind of hopelessness, ends up routinely being one of the great stumbling stones to evangelism. And also they of all people ought to know better: I expect inadvertent denials of omnipresence, or claims that God can do or not do love, or that God can act to fulfill final non-fair-togetherness between persons while still existing Himself, from non-trinitarians. At least they’re being somewhat coherent with their own beliefs when they do so!)
The Gospel of hope of salvation from sin makes a huge difference. Learning that God Most High exists and voluntarily suffers with the innocent, and even goes so far to save His own enemies while suffering in solidarity with the guilty, makes a huge difference. It resolves the problem of intentional evil and of inadvertent natural suffering; it gives us clear goals to aim for in our cultures and in our personal lives, and gives us assurance that those goals will be met; it gives us a clearer standard to tell when we’ve been sinning even if we have been following the letter of the Law, and to tell when those who do not know the Law are nevertheless following the Law in an honorable way. It leads us to recognize self-sacrificing love as the highest authority, rather than fundamentally worship mere power to cause effects; which in turn inspires us to regard the authority to serve in human culture as higher than the authority to be served (without simply renouncing the latter). It leads us to regard true love as ultimately rational and responsible instead of only some kind of emotional reaction; and to reject unloving reason as a crime against other persons. It leads us to recognize justice as primarily and positively being the fulfillment of fair-togetherness between persons, without denying that punishment is sometimes necessary, yet while guiding what ought to be the goal of any punishment. Heroes can fight chivalrously and valiantly to the final blood, and can chivalrously give their final blood for the sake of loving and saving their own enemies. Love and justice are the same action in regard to persons looked at from either side of fulfillment; and love fulfills the law and sets it aside.
Accepting Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior makes a difference to me anyway. 
And learning that Jesus originally loves and gives Himself for all sinners, whether those whom I love or those whom I hate, and will keep on at it to victory, makes a difference to me. Among other things, it means if I’m not joining Christ in this, then I’m the one in rebellion! – but it’s something I can clearly and reasonably see reason to join in with. I don’t have to guess whether God intends to save that person over there (or me!) or not; I don’t have to guess whether God will keep at it for him or for her (or for me!) until God succeeds. I only have to be sad about sin; I don’t have to be sad (or for that matter glad!) about the hopeless finality of sin, whether explained by appeal to God’s potency or to His impotency. Where sin exceeds the grace of God most certainly hyper-exceeds, for not as the sin is the grace – I don’t have to guess whether it hyper-exceeds sin for this or for that person, or whether it doesn’t because God doesn’t give that grace at all or because sin turns out to hyper-exceed God’s grace.
To put it shortly, fair-togetherness between people is the point. It’s not only the point, it’s the root and ultimate ground, not only of morality and ethics but of all existence. I confess the Lord’s salvation as my Lord and Savior, and not only for me but for all the world as well.
The sooner more people come to learn that and how to apply it, the better off the world will be now, and the less trouble there will be in the future by proportion, which is still very much a goal with giving my little shoves at the yoke for (even though the Strongest Ox is pushing the weight of that goal Himself–but if I didn’t cooperate with Him, then I wouldn’t be cooperating with Him, would i?) If i think that the promise of a certain happy ending leaves me free to be lazy and uncharitable now, I’m going to increase the trouble for myself and for other people between now and the happy ending – even from a purely pragmatic perspective that would be foolish (as well as immoral).
And that’s my little sermon on that matter. 
(But here’s around seven minutes of another even more evangelical little sermon on the matter I gave at the end of a radio debate with a Calvinist proponent of ECT, rather than spending my final minutes summarizing my position. )
