The Gospel Of God

What exactly is the Bible’s message to humanity?

The one true God, the God revealed in the Holy Scriptures gives to everyone life and breath and all things. He is holy, and His holiness consists of His perfect love of righteousness and perfect abhorrence of evil. He is infinitely pure, the standard of purity itself. When God made man, He made him upright, yet through Adam, the first man and our representative, sin entered into the world through his disobedience.

Death was the result of that sin and subsequently death spread to all men, because all sinned. As a consequence, we sin because we are sinners. God’s justice demands that sin must be punished in the way He has decreed it to be punished. God has declared that the soul that sins shall die.

All sin is a strike at God’s sovereignty (eg. lying, stealing, blasphemy, coveting, hatred, lust etc.). Sin is lawlessness and all wrongdoing is sin. Because we are sinners, Scripture rightly presents us as slaves to sin, enemies of God, powerless in our sinful state, controlled by our sinful nature, bound to disobedience, dead in sin and subjects of God’s wrath. We are utterly hopeless, utterly helpless and unable to do anything to save ourselves. We have as much chance of saving ourselves as climbing to the moon on a rope of sand! Hence we are on death row, awaiting God’s judgment and the eternal punishment that comes with rebelling against an eternal God. A punishment that will have its fulfillment in hell. God manifests his love for us in that while we were still sinners, while we were objects of His wrath, Jesus Christ the eternal Son of God, died for us. His perfect righteousness in fulfilling the law and perfect sacrifice is freely offered to all those that He loves with an electing love. God placed His seal on the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice by raising Him from the dead on the third day. Because of His holiness, God hates sin! God commands all people everywhere to repent, to turn away from their sin, because he has appointed a day to come on which He will judge the world in righteousness by Jesus Christ. There is salvation in no one else but Jesus, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. His command is that fallen humanity would repent of sin and receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour in order to gain peace with God forever!

If one can affirm to the truths of the Bible: If one acknowledges that they are lost and dying under the slavery of sin and have no hope of saving themself, then that is evidence of God enlightening them to the truth. He grants repentance, He grants belief in the truth, He grants faith in Jesus Christ and He promises to grant mercy freely to all who acknowledge that they have no hope without His mercy. His mercy is a free gift, available to all that desire it, because of the work Jesus Christ accomplished on the cross in paying for our sin. His love is greater than man’s enmity toward him; his grace is greater than man’s sin; his peace is greater than man’s fears. One must plead to God for mercy. His salvation is freely offered, because of Christ, to self-confessed sinners.