The most important question every human being must answer is, “How can I be right with God?” Perhaps you’ve never entertained that question, but whether you have or not, it lingers. In a world where truth is believed to be relative and reality lacks purpose, life can seem quite depressing. How do we make sense of it all? What’s the point? The Bible not only answers these questions, but it offers us good news. Not just good news, in fact, but the best news ever.
We all love stories, and the Bible presents us with the storyline of history. It tells us that there is a God who is self-existent and eternal, who created all things out of nothing (Gen. 1:1). He created time and space and He did so with the purpose of displaying His glorious character (Ps. 19:1-6). But the pinnacle of His creation was mankind (Ps. 8); we were made in His very image (Gen. 1:27), in the sense that we are personal beings and we share many of the things that make Him who He is, things like the ability to think and communicate and love. He set man on this little globe in the midst of the vast cosmos that He chose as the focal point of His creation and gave him dominion over the earth.
In the beginning, all was well. We had a perfect relationship with God. But it didn’t take long for things to go terribly wrong. The first man, Adam, violated God’s command. He sinned. He broke the boundary of trust God had clearly identified (1 Jn. 3:4) and the consequence was exactly what God had said it would be (Gen. 2:17). Man died. Adam began to die physically, and eventually he did indeed die. But at the moment he violated God’s command he died spiritually. That is, he was cut off from the perfect fellowship he had once enjoyed with God. And from that point on, each and every one of his descendants would inherit his guilt and corruption, and the same penalty he incurred, which was death (Rom. 5:12). In fact, the Bible says that every person who is born into this world may be physically alive but they are spiritually dead, and each of us work out our sin in all sorts of ways (Eph. 2:1-3). Left to ourselves, we will one day face God’s just and eternal punishment for our sin (Heb. 9:27), what the Bible calls the “second death” (Rev. 20:14).
Man’s sin is the reason there is death and disease and destruction (Gen. 3:17-19). It explains why, despite the beauty of the world in which we live, there is such chaos and heartache. But praise God, the story does not end on this sad note. God, in His mercy, even before man’s rebellion, had a plan to redeem a people for Himself and to create a new heavens and new earth for them to dwell in with Him for eternity (Rom. 8:18-25; Rev. 21:1-8). Even as God was pronouncing the consequences of Adam’s sin, He promised to send a Redeemer (Gen. 3:15), and the Old Testament records more of God’s promises that relate to the coming of this promised Messiah, God’s anointed One who, among many names, was to be called Immanuel, “God with us.” The New Testament opens with the birth of this promised One: a son born of a virgin, fulfilling the prophecy that was written down some 700 years prior, whose name would be called Jesus, which means “God saves” because His mission would be to save His people from their sins (Matt. 1:18-25).
Jesus Christ lived for 33 years upon this earth, and never once sinned (Jn. 8:46; Heb. 4:15). This is because Jesus was not like any other human being who ever lived. He was indeed a man, but He was (and is) also God (Jn. 1:1, 14; Col. 2:9). All four Gospels record many episodes of the last three years of His life in which He went about working countless miracles such as healing the sick, opening the eyes of the blind, and even raising the dead (Matt. 11:5). Yet, despite His perfect life and power and compassion, He was despised and rejected and ultimately sentenced to die the death of a common criminal upon a Roman cross. But all of this had been predicted before He was even born (Is. 53), and just as the Scriptures prophesied, after three days He rose from the dead (1 Cor. 15:4).
All of this was part of God’s sovereign plan to redeem a people for Himself, as the Apostle Peter later proclaimed to those who had crucified Jesus, “…this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men” (Acts 2:23). The facts of Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection are what the Bible calls the gospel, which literally means “good news” (1 Cor. 15:1-4). But it is not good news merely because of these historical facts. The Apostle Paul said Jesus “died for our sins,” and the New Testament explains the fullness of that statement and what it means for us. When Jesus died, He did not merely endure the horrific physical torture of the cross, but God the Father placed upon Him the guilt of all those who would ever believe on Him, and punished Him in their place (Rom. 3:23-26; 1 Pet. 2:24; 3:18). ”
“Jesus died for our sins” means that Jesus faced God’s wrath for our sin instead of us. And because He rose from the dead, He can grant us eternal life. This is a free gift that cannot be earned. It is received only by faith (Eph. 2:8-9; Rom. 6:23). Faith means trusting in what God has provided, which means that we must turn from everything else we are holding onto–our sin and our self-righteousness. This turning away is what the Bible calls repentance (Acts 17:30). Repentance and faith are like the two sides of a coin or the two wings of an airplane: you can’t have one without the other (Acts 20:21). When a person truly repents and believes in Jesus Christ, God not only forgives his or her sin, but He counts the very righteousness of Jesus Christ to their account (2 Cor. 5:21). This act of God is called justification; it is His declaration that the one who has faith in Jesus is right with Him (Rom. 10:9), and because He is the One who makes that declaration, He will never revoke it. Nothing in all creation is able to separate a genuine believer from God’s love (Rom. 8:31-39).
At the core of our sinful nature is selfishness and pride, which is why so many people reject God’s gracious offer of salvation. Many deny that He even exists and scoff at “religion.” Others worship false gods or follow man-made philosophies. Others follow man-made religions that claim to worship the one, true God, yet think they are made right with Him by their good works. At the core of the human heart is the belief that we’re not that bad–that we really have good hearts and just need to find our path to the truth that works for us. But the Bible says otherwise. It tells us that, in reality, “None is righteous, no, not one” (Rom. 3:10) and that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). It tells us that there is only one, true God, and that He has provided only one way of salvation and that way is a Person–the perfect God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ who said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn. 14:6). “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
This is the gospel and it is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16). The good news is that you can be saved right where you sit (or stand). You don’t have to do anything to be right with God; you simply must be willing to turn from your own way and trust in Jesus alone. Will you put your faith in Him today?
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