The Gospel, in the words of Ashley C
God is. God has always been. God will always be. He exists outside of time and outside of all Creation because he is the Creator. Nothing that exists was made outside of him. He is all powerful, fully capable of doing anything and everything, with raw power the force of which we can only imagine. He is bigger than anything we can imagine, holding the universe in the palm of his hand. He knows all things simultaneously, from the smallest particles of energy to the massive galaxies we can only glimpse. God is the single most powerful entity that there is. He is the source of truth, as he created all existence. Only he knows the full extent of his creation and the reason for everything within. He is also absolutely righteous, the single source of everything that is good, pure, right and lovely. God is the source of true hope and peace. He is the standard by which all things must measure against because he is the Creator and God. He exists in heaven; heaven is the place where God the father is. In heaven he exists in his rightful glory, on a throne that shines blindingly bright and with angels surrounding him continually crying out how holy he is. God, and God alone, is entirely worthy of all glory and praise.
God, in his infinite wisdom, created the Earth and everything in it. He created man, and he created woman, both in his image. He created them perfectly, and dwelt together with them in a perfect place. He gave them one commandment: not to eat the fruit of a particular tree from the garden they lived in. The woman was deceived, and chose to eat the fruit that God commanded her not to. She gave the fruit to her husband, who also chose to eat. When they did this, the man and the woman disobeyed God, and brought forth something called sin into the world. Sin is any action, thought or attitude that goes against God’s commands or his perfect nature. Because God is absolutely perfect, he cannot tolerate sin in his presence. Therefore the man and the woman could no longer dwell with God, and they became separated from God, severed from his presence because of their sin.
Sin changed the man and the woman physically and spiritually. Because life is from God, and sin is against God, the consequence of the man and the woman’s sin was that they would lose their lives because of it. So when sin entered the world, death entered the world as its natural consequence. The sons and daughters of that first man and woman carry both their physical and spiritual legacies: no human can ever be perfect and without sin, and as such all humans will die because of their sin.
God is absolutely perfect, and nothing less than pure holiness can be in the presence of his perfection. Because no human being is purely holy on their own, they cannot be in his presence. Every human who is imperfect cannot be with God, and the only place to go apart from God after death is hell. Therefore, every human being deserves to go to hell. Hell is the place where perfect justice is executed, in the sense that every person will receive the exact punishment that they deserve for sinning against the perfectly holy God. The gravity of this sin is so great that those entering hell will pay this price for eternity.
God deeply loved mankind, and he continued to love them even after they sinned greatly and grieved his heart. God gave mankind his law, partly to protect them from sin but also to show them how good and how holy he was, and to show mankind how far away from God’s holiness they really were. God wanted to show them that they needed a savior in order to come close to him. God demanded animals for sacrifices to show us that there is a consequence for our sins, and that consequence is death. God spoke to man and protected him; he proved himself faithful time and time again for hundreds of years. But man was still sinful, and he could never ever fulfill the law and be as holy as God. Man strayed from God and sought out other things, things that deceived him and seemed to be more important and worthwhile than the almighty God of the universe. Sin and evil increased in the world, and man continued to live and to die and to mock the holiness of God.
But God would not let his beloved children be without hope and lost to the evil of the world. He sent his Son, Jesus, to the earth to proclaim the truth about God. Now as the son of a human is human, so the Son of God is God. And because the Son of God was born to a woman, he was both things- fully God and fully man. No one who has ever lived was like Jesus, because Jesus is God as he existed on earth.
Because Jesus is God, he could do things that no other human could do. He healed people, sometimes just by touching them, sometimes without even being in their presence. He healed blind people and allowed them to see for the first time. He healed paralytics so they could rise and walk. He cast out demons from the people they oppressed with a simple word. Thousands of people followed him as he traveled, longing to be with him and listen to the words that spoke. And he never turned them away. He made time to teach people and to love them even when it was hard, even when he was tired, even when he just wanted to be alone. He told them the truth about God, and about how following religious rules would never bring them closer to God because ultimately they would still be sinners. He told them to repent of their sins and to follow him. He told the truth to people, even when it was offensive and they did not want to hear it. He told the truth because he lived perfectly according to God’s will. In absolutely everything that he did, Jesus sought to glorify his father by loving him and being perfectly obedient to him. Jesus never sinned.
Even though God created men, most men did not recognize God when he walked amongst them. Many people hated Jesus and the truth that he preached, and they persecuted him. They brought him to court and told lies about him, yet even when faced with death at the hands of the insubordinate creatures which he himself had created, Jesus did not seek his own glory on earth or use his power to hurt us. We beat him and spat in the face of this man who had done nothing but gave everything he had to serve others in love. Then he was crucified; he was nailed to a cross as the people whom he had loved so compassionately watched him bleed and die, mocking him in his pain.
Now the death of this man, Jesus, was different from any other person’s death, because his death served as a sacrifice. While man had sacrificed animals for hundreds of years according to the law, these could never make up for the offenses we committed against God. Jesus, however, lived a perfect life and his blood was so precious that when he offered it, it served as a perfect sacrifice for sins. He shed his blood and died in our place so that we would not have to. And even though Jesus was God’s beloved Son, perfectly loving and obedient, God chose to accept his sacrifice and to look at Jesus the way that he looks upon sinners. God’s wrath was poured out, and the weight of the eternal punishment of hell that is fully deserved by each and every human who has ever existed was inflicted on Jesus at his death.
Jesus was the one and only person who ever lived (and ever will live) that did not deserve the punishment of hell. He was the one person who was truly righteous, the one person who lived and loved perfectly according to God’s will. And because he was God, it was fully within his power to rise off of that cross and leave us to the punishment that we deserved. But Jesus did not do that. Jesus, in the single most unfathomable act of sacrificial selflessness the world has ever known, stayed on that cross, and endured the punishment that we deserved. He was separated from God the father, the source of all that is good, pure and true and suffered a pain so intense that nothing could ever compare to it.
Jesus endured this because he loves us, and he knew that this sacrifice was the only way to reconcile mankind with God. The only way that we could be with God is if we were without sin. None of us were capable of that on our own, and we were damned because of it. But Jesus was God, and He lived without sin. He was the only person who could ever live without sin. And when he chose to give up his life, death could not hold him, because he had no sin. And so, three days after he was killed, Jesus came back to life. Jesus is alive today, in heaven, and he will live forever in glory, having been given all authority in heaven and on earth by God the father.
This story, called the Gospel, changes the entirety of mankind’s relation to God. When we die, we will stand before God in all of his glory and might, and we will be held accountable for all of the things that we have done during our lives. God will demand repayment for our offenses, and on our own we have absolutely nothing to offer and no hope of escaping the punishment we deserve. Left alone, we will go to the hell we rightfully deserve. But if we have come to know and to believe the truth of the Gospel, if we repent of our sins and believe that Jesus Christ was God, and if we acknowledge that he died on the cross in our place and rose again to conquer death, God does an amazing thing. When we stand before him, he will look at us the way that he looks at Jesus. In God’s sight, we will be perfect, holy and blameless because Jesus already paid the price for our sins. And not only will we get to stay in the presence of God, but we get to dwell with him for all eternity in pure light and peace, adopted and loved as his precious children.
Now, God offers this gift of salvation to the entire world. Jesus made the sacrifice for all of your sins, no matter who you are, and he extends his love and mercy to you. There is nothing that you can do to earn this gift or even to deserve it; God's grace must merely be accepted. If you believe that these things are true, you can pray to God and tell him that you believe that Jesus paid the price for your sins, and you can ask him to come into your life. “Because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9)
Feel free to let me know what your reaction to this story is, whatever it may be.
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