The Gospel

The Good News of Salvation

In the Bible, God communicates His intention to be in relationship with mankind, the reason for evil and death in the world, and what work He is accomplishing in alignment with His supremely-good character to eliminate evil & death in a way that reconciles mankind back into relationship with Him. To this end, one should understand that God allowed free-will (the ability to choose) in His creation because it was good. And, because there was free-will, the result was evil entered into creation through choice. God, loving His creation but also benevolently-obligated to destroy evil at it's source, delayed His judgmental action against mankind (death/destruction) in order to provide a means of reconciliation of the relationship between God and mankind. Said bluntly, God's goodness requires Him to destroy all evil including each one of us who are guilty of ANY level of wrongdoing. However, His goodness also is currently allowing for a period of grace where punishment for wrongdoing is postponed to allow time for wrongdoing to be atoned for (payment of penalty for wrongdoing). Because the natural thing to be done with any form of evil is to destroy it, God communicates in His word that the payment for our wrongdoing is our own destruction. But, He also provided another way to pay this penalty by incarnating Himself in the form of man as Jesus Christ and, being innocent of any wrongdoing of His own, willingly accepted the punishment due to anyone who believes and accepts Jesus as their atoning payment for their wrongdoing. That is to say, God in love subjected Himself to death as payment for our wrongdoing. Before Jesus did this, He taught that the way to "opt-in" to this free gift of payment of the penalty for our past, present and future wrong doing is to believe in Him and repent (reject & turn away from) our wrong doing.

Here's an attempt at a logical outline of the above:

• A benevolent (truly good in every way) God's actions are always naturally in alignment with the greatest good.
• A benevolent God allows free will.
• A benevolent God will use His power for justice.
• A byproduct of creating beings with choice are beings that do not choose benevolence. These must be reconciled to good or destroyed.
• A benevolent God will gracefully allow for reconciliation as a means of justice before administering destructive justice.
• An omniscient (all-knowing) God knows whether grace will produce reconciliation or not.
• A benevolent God limits the time grace is available as it is by nature not good for justice to never be served.
• A benevolent God seeks to creates eternal beings that are without evil which are by nature of infinitely good value.

The above statements are exactly what God has done. He created the world and everything in it with the intent from the outset to ultimately create good beings that have the free will to choose goodness and therefore relationship with Him. Because choice is involved, there are beings that have also been created that do not choose to align with goodness and therefore reject good relationships with God. God has provided the information and the time for every individual to make a choice. Because God is good and therefore just, we can trust that any individual who has truly not been afforded a “fair” opportunity will be — as we know some seem to die before they’ve had the opportunity to consciously make this choice. When God has finished enacting grace and justice upon all of His creation, the final state will be achieved - eternal life in good relationship with Him for all who choose it. This is God’s communicated intention from the start.

I just want to emphasize that the summary of the above is that God has provided a means of alignment with Him and everlasting life through belief in Jesus Christ. All anyone reading this content has ever known is the period of grace in which wrath is being withheld. It is my belief this window is imminently closing. So, in love and obedience to God I urge you — Take the time to learn about God and make an informed decision for yourself.

If you wish to start a relationship with God, pray to Him. There are no magic words, He knows you better than you know yourself and you can therefore speak to him as you would anyone else. I recommend acknowledging that you know you've done wrong (by truly Godly standards) and that you don't want that to separate you from relationship with Him and for that reason you ask for His forgiveness through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus. If that's your prayer, believe the payment of Jesus's sacrifice included payment for your sins and repent of those things (acknowledge they were wrong and earnestly seek to stop doing them). Remember it's your belief and the sacrifice of Jesus that saves you, not your success in living perfectly moving forward (you won't).

If any of this doesn't make sense to you, get a Bible and pray the Holy Spirit helps you understand, ask a pastor, or message me and I'll answer as many questions as you might have.