The Gospel : In Bullet Points

First things first, my intention is not to offend anyone with this short summary of what Christianity is all about...my intention is to simply put it out there in a straightforward way as a starting point for people who have not got a clue what it's about.

The reason being..I wonder if people don't like the gospel (good news) because they don't hear or see it. If all they hear and see is judgement, hate and a list of rules... they are not going to want to know more, they're going to run in the opposite direction, and so they should...none of that sounds like good news to me either.

So, for those of you reading this that have never really heard what Christianity is all about, this is for you.

Here goes:

• Christianity in one word is probably best described as forgiveness. We believe that Jesus died for us, thereby paying the price for the sins of each and every one of us (past, present and future) and in exchange giving us His perfection and righteousness (lack of sin). 《1 Peter 2.24》
• We believe that in dying for us Jesus, opened up the way for us to have a purposeful, loving relationship with God the father and therefore live life through Him, and as a result live better.

That's pretty much it. The bible is all about the situation we were in before Christ came to earth (in need of forgiveness), what happened when He came to earth (paid the penalty for our sin and brought forgiveness), and the new situation we can be in if we choose to accept Him in our lives (living a supernatural life -beyond natural, realer, deeper and more vibrant than what we see and do day-to-day).

I could go on..but I wanted to keep this short and sweet. The gospel is that Jesus died to set us free from lives full of sin and all that go with them and enable us to live a life of righteousness with Him, our closest, most trustworthy and faithful friend; leading the way.

Salvation is here

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WHILE WE WERE STILL SINNERS, CHRIST DIED FOR US

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You see, we could never have earned salvation. So God gave it to us for free, sending His son to pay the ultimate price.

This is what it means to be Saved by Grace

#whatagospel

Once foolish...but...God our Saviour...appeared

My all time favourite verses in the bible are in Titus 3.3-7.

"For we ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that having been justified by His grace we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life."

The verses give in basic, easy to understand language, the condition of humanity before God, and shows us the greatness of the salvation given to us in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Before Christ, we were typical humans.

1. Foolish - Constantly making stupid decisions and choices,
2. Disobedient - Rebellious (come on, none of us can deny that when we're told not to do something we want to do it even more!)
3. Deceived - Believing every negative untruth ever said about us (you know the type; you're so ugly, you're not good enough, you're a failure, nobody wants you around etc.)
4. Serving various lusts and pleasures - Being addicted and trapped by things (thinking we know true freedom because we do 'what we like'; think about some typical addictions and the sentences that follow them, 'I couldn't help myself', 'then I just thought, one more won't hurt', 'I mean who's going to know anyway?', 'I had an itch I needed to scratch, so I itched it' - any of these sounding familiar?)
5. Living in malice and envy - Being full of unhelpful intentions and selfish desires, getting jealous when others do better or have more
6. Being hated and hating others - This is pretty self-explanatory.

This is the picture of humanity that is painted in the New Testament, and if we look at the world around us I'd say it is startlingly accurate. By nature, this is human.

"But when the kindness and the love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us..."

But when you grasp even a little of what God is and what He has done for you, when you begin to understand what it is to live in true freedom, with God the Holy Spirit as your guide through life, you no longer find yourself acting the way you did before. Knowing God transforms you. As you understand more and more of who God is, as you see how much He loves you, not because you deserve it but because it's His nature, you become more and more like Him. It's not a conscious thing, you aren't 'trying to be Christ like' but in knowing God more and more, you find your human nature no longer dictates how you work, it's as if you've thrown it off and taken on the nature of God, and you can't help but live in a way that says, 'I've finally found God and He has changed me'.

Salvation is so beautiful because it's not about us trying to be better, it 's not about us doing things in order to make us good, it's about letting go of everything we cannot control (this means us ourselves too!!) and letting God lead and guide us, and ultimately transform us.

Try it, I PROMISE you won't be disappointed. If you think life is great now, in the words of Eliza Dolittle from My Fair Lady, 'just you wait'.

2 Corinthians 5.21

"For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."

- 2 Corinthians 5.21 NKJV

Luke 24.26-27 and The Gospel of Jesus Christ

'He told them, "This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem..."'

The gospel of Jesus Christ is repentance and forgiveness:

Not condemnation, but hope.

Not death, but life.

Not lawfulness, but relationship.

One of the things the scribes took issue with was Jesus forgiving sins (Matthew 9.1-6), because they believed only God had power to forgive sins, but if Jesus was who He claimed to be, the son of God (Luke 22.70) and the Christ (Matthew 16.16-17), then He had full right to forgive sins.

And that's what He came to earth to do. He came to bridge the gap between the sinful and the sinless. So He came to Earth, still God, in the form of a man, so that He could walk among us and make God real to us, make God personal. He came to Earth to save us.

Do you know where something similar happened? Joseph.

Joseph was fully human (you can tell by his behaviour), and when he dreamt of his future and all that was to come, instead of keeping it hush-hush as Jesus did (Matthew 16.20, Mark 8.30, Luke 9.21), he went around boasting about it.

He wasn't lying though. His brothers were going to bow down to him (Genesis 37.7-11). So after he told them all that he had dreamt they 'disposed of him', rather like what happened to Jesus with his crucifixion. And they thought that was the end of it.

"But what they didn't know was that what they had meant for evil, God had meant to be their own salvation (Genesis 50.20)."

You see without Joseph being thrown in a well, he wouldn't have been sold to Ishmaelites, which would have meant he wouldn't have been a slave in Potiphar's house in Egypt, which in turn would mean that he wouldn't have been accused of rape, which would mean he wouldn't have ended up in jail, which would have meant that he wouldn't have been there to decipher the meanings of the dreams of the baker and cupbearer, which would have meant that he wouldn't have been able to decipher the King's dream, which would mean that he wouldn't have been able to save Egypt and the surrounding lands (including the land of Canaan where all his brother's lived), which would have meant that his whole family would have died.

In much the same way, if God was not merciful, then He would not have sent His son Jesus (who was both God and man) to be crucified, which would mean He (Jesus) wouldn't have taken the cost of all our sins, and if He hadn't taken the penalty for all our sins which is death (Romans 6.23a), we would all be facing eternity without God, Hell, rather than having what we now have (should we want it), the gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus (Romans 6.23b).

Hey guys, use this website http://www.blueletterbible.org/index.cfm to look up all the verses that I have mentioned. Just type each of them into the search bar at the top and choose a version you think you will find easiest to understand. The version I have used for my quotes here is the NIV.

The Solution

"God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God."

-2 Corinthians 5.21

Here's mathematical problem for you to solve:

God likes ONLY 100% Righteousness/Goodness, Humankind = 97% Righteousness/Goodness

If God wants to be friends with Humankind without going back on His standard, how does He do it?

God puts himself, in the body of a man, Jesus = 100% Righteousness

God takes all of humankind's unrighteousness and swaps it for Jesus' righteousness, so that now it looks like this;

Humankind through Jesus = 100% Righteousness

"...the LORD has laid on Him
the iniquity of us all."

-Isaiah 53.6

This is salvation.

God can't fellowship with anything that is not 100% good, even if it's only 3% bad. [2 Corinthians 6.14]. But God wants to be in a relationship with us. So to provide a solution to this problem, He sent Jesus who is fully good, to take all our sin, so that we could be 100% good, and He could have a relationship with us.

And because of this; because of Christ's atonement for our sins, no matter what our past before Jesus, or what sins we have committed or even have yet to commit, God extends the arm of kindness, love and graciousness to us, so that instead of perishing and facing eternal separation from Him, we have eternity with Him.

"For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life."

-John 3.16