If you have spent any time at this blog, I hope you’ve noticed something. I hope you’ve noticed an inescapable theme woven through and shaping all my thinking and writing. The theme is the Gospel.
I have opinions about many things, and I can say with certainty that many of them are flawed. Sometimes our opinions are a reflection of ourselves, they’re subjective and based on subjective life circumstances. But there are times when our “opinions” are really beliefs, beliefs based on a reality.
I think that what I believe about God and His Son, Jesus, and the Bible is one of the latter things. It is a belief based on a fact, a reality, a truth.
If I said I believe Lincoln was the President during the Civil War and gave the Gettysburg address and was assassinated while watching the opera, that belief would be true. It is based on actual events that happened.
I believe the Bible to have the same sort of historical factual information, and much much more.
Here are the nuts and bolts of what I believe:
God made the earth and Adam and Eve. They lived in harmony with God, until they sinned. After they sinned they were separated from God and they and the earth became cursed as a result of their evil.
The sin problem plagued every human from then on. It has been life’s biggest, most serious problem. Their sin, and ours, is against a holy and perfect God who cannot tolerate it and must send sinners to eternal punishment.
For hundreds of years, God’s people, Israel, tried to make peace with God by sacrificing animals to atone for their sin. God was gracious in forbearing with these less than perfect sacrifices.
Prophets like Isaiah foretold the coming of a man, called the Messiah, who would save the people from their sins. And that this Savior would save more than just Israel, but would be for all peoples. He would be the perfect sacrifice needed to bring peace with God and overcome sin and death. He would, in fact, be God incarnate.
This God-man, the Messiah, named Jesus, was born of a virgin Mary, he was begotten of God the Father, and He lived a perfect life. He loved everyone perfectly and was good and just and all the things we might try to be, but fail.
Eventually He was hanged on a cross. This was the will of His Father. It was part of a plan that the Father had to bring reconciliation between Himself and sinful people. The same sinful people that crucified Christ, would now have the opportunity for peace with God through the very death they enacted. Jesus was crushed for our iniquity.
And after He was murdered on our behalf, He rose from the dead after three days, thereby defeating death forever.
When He rose from the dead, He was seen by many witnesses and even ate a meal with His disciples. Then God took Him up to heaven.
This all happened over 2000 years ago. You can read about it in the Bible. The Bible is God’s Word. This means that what is written in the Bible is not simply an historical account (although it is that too), but God’s very words to us, that He inspired mere humans to write. Everything in it is True and for the benefit of sinful people to come to God and know God and glorify God.
For me, this is good news.
This is life-changing news. It is Life for my dead heart. It is Light for my dark mind. It is Bread for my hungry soul. It is the Way, when all ways were shut. It is the Good Shepherd, when all had gone astray. It is the Truth, when lies were closing in.
Does this sound like good news to you?
Do you sense God’s Holy Spirit beckoning you to taste and see that the Lord is good? Do you long to cast your burden of sin onto Jesus, gaining for yourself freedom from sin and joy in loving God in this life and forever in heaven? Do you want to give thanks to God for this gift? Do you desire to see His name made great, because you now see that He is Great?
I hope you do. I hope you want to run and find the nearest Bible to learn more about this thing called Christianity. I hope you decide to find a church that believes the Bible and is depending on Christ for their salvation through faith alone (trusting and believing God), by grace alone (not depending on good works).
If you want to hear the good news again, in someone else’s words. Here it is:
Please contact me or a Christian in your life, if you have turned from your sin and are now resting in Christ’s Righteousness.
I believe too.