The Gospel
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Are you a good person?
Most people believe that if they are generally good, they will go to heaven. In other words, their good deeds will compensate for their bad ones, or that if they sincerely try to live a good life, God will accept them.
But the problem lies in the fact that God does not judge us according to human standards; He judges us according to His own standards. What are these standards? They are simply found in the Ten Commandments.
🤥 Who among us has never lied?
🤫 Have you ever taken something that did not belong to you, regardless of its value?
🤬 Have you ever used God's name in a vulgar, thoughtless, or rude manner?
🤤 Jesus said that if you look at someone with lustful desires, you have already committed adultery in your heart. Have you ever done that? Have you ever desired someone who does not belong to you?
😤 Most of us have never killed another human being. Perhaps you think you have kept this commandment? Yet the Bible teaches that “whoever hates his brother is a murderer” (1 John 3:15). Have you ever hated someone? Have you ever hated another person and thus committed murder in your heart?
According to God's standards, we are all liars, thieves, idolaters, blasphemers, and adulterers and murderers in our hearts. We have all, at one time or another, disobeyed our parents, coveted, and failed to put God first in our lives.
The bad news
It is clear that we have broken God's law and that if God judges us according to His standards, we are guilty.
Many people disagree with this because they think God will not judge according to the average or that they are not as bad as Hitler and terrorists. However, every sin, no matter how insignificant it may seem to us, is a mockery and an infinite offense against the holy God. The Bible teaches us that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).
This death is not just an absence of Heaven, but eternal and conscious suffering, a place where God will punish lawbreakers by unleashing His wrath, a very real place that the Bible calls Hell.
Sin has eternal consequences because it is committed against an eternal God. Once a person goes to Hell, there is no chance of escape; their fate is tragic and eternal.
The good news
God is rich in mercy and gave His Son, Jesus Christ, as the only way to forgive your sins.
Jesus lived a perfect life; he never sinned, not even once. And he offered his sinless life as a sacrifice to pay for your sins. When he was crucified, he exchanged his perfection for your sin, so that all the sins you have committed were imputed to him and his righteousness was credited to you.
Furthermore, he absorbed into his body the eternal wrath of God that was to fall on you. He took your punishment upon himself, so that God has nothing left to punish you for.
You broke God's law, the 10 Commandments, but Jesus paid your fine and satisfied God's justice through his perfect life and sacrificial death.
Jesus died in your place, and because his sacrifice was sufficient, he rose from the grave on the third day in a glorified body, in which he ascended to heaven, promising that we too will be resurrected one day.
God offers us forgiveness of our sins and eternal life, not because we are good, but because Jesus paid for us. What we must do in response is repent (turn away from our sins) and place our trust in Jesus for eternity.
As soon as we do this (repentance and faith), God promises that he will forgive us for all our sins and grant us the free gift of eternal life in Heaven.
“For God so loved the world that he gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).