Is there really any Good News to be found?
With so many people putting their faith in Christ recently due to the sometimes overwhelming amount of upheaval in the world, that question may be front and center in many hearts and minds.
How do I know that I am “saved”? What does that even mean? Can I be “born again”?
First of all, I’m no Bible scholar or expert, and there are surely many who are more qualified than I am to speak on this.
I am, however, a believer in Jesus who reads her Bible often, and has a heart to spread the good news about Him to any in my orbit who desire to hear it. Of course, by all means, examine the Scriptures on your own and prove to your own heart whether these things be true.
In a recent video, I had summed up the Gospel in a nutshell, but want to elaborate a little bit more here, to make it as clear and yet also as simple as possible.
Gospel Framework
Here’s a quote from that video “My point is, we are sunk without Christ, because none of us can be perfected on our own. None of us have the wherewithal to follow His law perfectly. And if you think you do, you’re lying to yourself. And if you don’t know the Lord, I want to encourage you to come to Him, because He paid the price that you’re going to owe to the Father in the end. He paid it for you. That’s the Gospel in a nutshell.
You owe a debt that’s too big for you, so God came to this earth to live this life, pay the price for you, and allow you in to the Kingdom. So won’t you come to Him today, my friend?”
Deeper Understanding
It’s often interesting to hear what the world generally says about how to be a “good Christian” or what it means to follow Christ. Jesus is simplified down to a “good Teacher” or a “Prophet”, Who told us the way we should live.
And certainly He WAS those things. Yet He is so much more. Those who see Him as simply a good role model think that if we follow His loving lead and do more “good” than “bad”, that we will be fit for the Kingdom.
He is loving and forgiving, and would never hold our sin against us, right?
Holiness
But our perception of God’s goodness and holiness are so simplistic and nowhere near the fullness of what the Scriptures teach.
He is actually COMPLETELY holy, along with all that love, forgiveness and kindness. He is actually the “King” that reigns over that “Kingdom”.
When sin entered the picture in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve sinned, they didn’t die right away (although they had been warned that they WOULD die if they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil), but from then on, all of humanity’s life-spans were cut short, ending eventually in physical/spiritual death as the result of that sin.
Acknowledging that we are sinners is one of the most difficult but important parts of the Gospel.
Since we live on this side of the Crucifixion and Resurrection, the thought that God is a forgiving God makes us discount how vile our sin is to Him. He is PERFECT, and imperfect beings cannot stand before Him.
In the end, you and I will give an account to Him. We will stand before Him either naked and ashamed, in our sin, or covered “in Christ” because of what He did to reconcile us to Himself.
Repentance
The next vital part of the Gospel is that we need to “repent” or TURN from that sin, from our flippant attitude toward God, and stop heading down a road that is walking AWAY from Him. We need to turn to FACE Him, and walk humbly TOWARD Him, seeking His forgiveness and restoration. That is what we find in the Cross, because as He hung dying on that Cross, He said “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).
Jesus was not killed on the Cross because He came against the “powers that be” or because He was a rebel. He was killed because He claimed to be God in the flesh, and the religious leaders knew EXACTLY what He was saying, and considered it blasphemy, deserving of death.
Problem for them (and really, for Satan) is that He was not only fully human, but that He is also fully God, and when they killed Him (One who had NOT sinned), death had no power over Him. On the third day after that horrendous murder of the Holy One, He rose from the grave, and has been alive ever since, even to this day and for all of eternity.
One of the main parts of being saved is to BELIEVE in the Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah) and accept the free gift of salvation that He paid for on that cross. We don’t HAVE to accept it, even though He purchased our freedom and holds it out to us graciously. If we choose NOT to accept it, we stand condemned already because of our sin … because “the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23)
The Bible says there’s only one way into the Kingdom, and that is through Christ. That’s because there’s no amount of trying on our part that will make us holy enough to stand before Him in the end.
“Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”
(Acts 4:12)
New Life
When we turn around to face Him, and put our faith in Him, accepting the free gift that He purchased, we are born for a second time, born of the Spirit. That is the reason that He says to be “baptized”, because that is an outward symbol of our old self dying (as if it were put under the water for good), and our new self coming up out of the water, like He came up out of the grave during the Resurrection.
At that point, when we are born from above, the Holy Spirit of Jesus comes into our hearts and begins to live within us. It is in the relationship formed between the believer and the Lord, in which our lives and hearts begin to change. We become more like Him, and our old selfish sinful nature begins to fade away as we “die daily” to our old ways and allow Him to live in and through us.
So that, my friend is a little more thorough explanation of what it means to be “born again”, and what we mean when we refer to the “Gospel”. Gospel means “Good News”, and it is good, because God wants to have a close relationship with you, so close that He actually lives inside you. You do not need to work on yourself to try to get better and be less sinful. You simply need to surrender to Him and let Him do His good work in you.
There is so much more to the story, of COURSE, and so many Bible verses that could be explored to make it even more clear…
Perhaps you might go over to the Bible sitting on YOUR shelf, open up to the Book of John and start reading at that point…. Surely you’ll soon find out that it is truly GOOD NEWS.
If you have been moved by the words in this Podcast, and want to know clearly that you have begun a relationship with Jesus, check out this beautiful prayer that will help you ask Him to save your soul:
https://www.lovinggrace.org/salvation-prayer
God bless you, my friend.
Lisa Prokopowitz is a Christian Singer/Songwriter, Guitarist, Podcaster and Blogger who seeks to lift up the name of Jesus and draw hungry hearts unto Him.
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