Do you ever get the feeling you’ve never really heard the Gospel before?
I used to feel that way. I’d heard it probably hundreds of times, but it didn’t affect me like it seemed to affect other people. I’d heard whispers, hints, and mostly wonderful revelations about God’s nature and His Love, which were radically life-changing for me, but the Gospel of Jesus Christ isn’t something we hear—It’s something that happens to us.
The Gospel has to happen to you, and when it does, you’ll know it.
Sometimes it helps to hear it in a different way. Please keep in mind, I’m just a witness, telling you what I know, what I’ve seen and heard.
So the Gospel goes something like this….
In the beginning, humans enjoyed keeping perfect company with God, in His Presence. We were clothed with God’s glory, something like light. We could approach God our Father and be with Him in all His glory, because we were perfect too (Adam and Eve, that is). Then, when they sinned, everything changed. They instantly lost their glory—their covering.
A beloved local doctor shares this helpful illustration: Think of God as being brilliantly white with purity and holiness, living in a mansion that is also bright white with cleanness and holiness—Everything about God is perfect and clean and holy. But we can’t come into His mansion or approach Him because we’re very filthy, stained with sin. It’s not that God can’t stand the sight of us or that we offend Him with our humanity—That’s not it at all. The reason we cannot approach God or enter His Presence is because of His Holiness—We wouldn’t survive! We have no glory to protect us.
No one can see God and live because we’re sinners, and His holiness is too wonderful. No human being can withstand or endure such perfection—It would naturally kill us. God’s Presence is often described as an all-consuming fire, because His Power is unapproachable to any fallen thing, and we fell hard. Remember Mount Horeb, how the people could not touch the mountain of God or they would die? The Old Testament tells us God’s story. All those beautiful and crazy old stories have profound meaning! We would die if we tried to enter His Presence in this condition, just like we would die if we grabbed a high voltage fence—The electricity doesn’t hate us, it’s just that we can’t endure its power! Same with God.
So in His absolute love for us—BECAUSE GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD—He sent Jesus to come to us…
Instead of us dying in God’s Presence trying to reach Him in our sinful state, Jesus chose to come to earth, to our presence, to die here, in the presence of our sin, bearing our sin in Himself, to close the gap between us and God, to restore us to God’s Presence! He shares His glory with us, and we can enter in through JESUS! Only through Jesus, Beautiful Jesus, who saved us and redeemed us! He willingly died in our place—not because we had to die, but because we would die, because we couldn’t endure God’s Presence otherwise.
Jesus chose to die in our place, taking into Himself the sin of the whole world, so anyone who wants to enter in may do so through Him. Anyone who calls on His Name will be saved—We may enter into God’s Presence and experience life forever because of Jesus’ Death and Resurrection. He ended death’s hold on us because God loves us so much He was willing to come to us in Jesus the Messiah.
We were dead, our spirits were dead because of sin, but the moment we reach for the gift of salvation through Jesus, our spirits return to life—We are born again.
It’s so beautiful, when it lands on your spirit, you’ll weep. Every story in the Bible is telling The Story of God in its own way, pointing to Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life. It’s so lovely—Everything is new. Jesus did the kindest, most selfless thing in the history and future of the world, and I am undone. The Gospel truly is Beautiful Good News. Thank You, Abba. Thank You, Jesus.
And I didn’t even get to the part about the gift of God’s Spirit!
But that’s for another day.
And this righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.…
Romans 3:22-23
Because God loved the world so, so much that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but will experience eternal life. God did not send His Son into the world to judge and condemn the world, but to be its Savior and rescue it! So now there is no longer any condemnation for those who believe in Him, but the unbeliever already lives under condemnation because they do not believe in the name of God’s beloved Son. And here is the basis for their judgment: The Light of God has now come into the world, but the hearts of people love their darkness more than the Light, because they want the darkness to cover their evil. So the wicked hate the Light and try to hide from it, for their lives are fully exposed in the Light. But those who love the truth will come out into the Light and welcome its exposure, for the Light will reveal that their fruitful works were produced by God.
John 3:16-21