the gospel

Since so much what I write about is in reference to the gospel, I thought it'd be helpful to have a quick explanation of what I'm talking about. I don't want to make any assumptions.

God created and it was good.

As an overflow of enjoyment of himself, the 3-person God created the heavens and the earth, every living creature, and man and woman in his own image. After each thing was made, he called it good. It was a perfect world with complete communion between man and God.

Sin came and everything was fractured.

Adam and Eve decided they knew what they needed better than God did, so they ate an apple. God gave them everything, then told them not to eat the fruit of one specific tree (not because he was a dictator but because he wanted to protect them, like any loving father). Then Satan -- as a snake --convinced them God was depriving them of something but he could give them what they really wanted. Satan's lying persuaded them to eat the fruit. Satan promised they'd be "like God, knowing good and evil", until this point they only knew the good. Now they knew shame and guilt so they hid.

As a consequence of sin entering the world, everything was fractured: creation itself, relationships among men and women, and most importantly man's communion with God. Sin was then passed down to the rest of humanity. Sin isn't doing bad things--those are just symptoms of it. Sin is a condition of the heart, an innate wanting to be a god and not wanting to submit to God himself. No one's exempt. I repeat, no one is exempt. We're all on the same playing field--we're sinners and God's still good.

Jesus came, died, and rose to life again.

With the state of humanity in shambles, incapable of upholding the Laws of Moses themselves--let's not even talk about our inability to uphold the heart behind the laws!--God the Father sent God the Son, Jesus. Jesus was 100% man and 100% God. He lived a sinless life, then died on a cross. Death entered as a result of sin, but Christ was sinless. Still, Christ died because he put our wrongs on himself. Instead of us paying the penalty for our selfishness, he died in order to bring us back into communion with himself. His death took care of all past, present, and future sin for the believer. In Jesus's death he showed God the Father to be a just judge (a good judge would never let a proven-guilty man go free without any punishment), Jesus became our substitute for the Father's wrath against sin, he made it possible for a believer's slate to be completely washed clean, he made fellowship with each other possible, and at least 46 other things (John Piper has a book called Fifty Reasons Jesus Came to Die ).

Jesus is more powerful than Satan and sin, though, and proved it when he rose to life again. It's historically proven that Jesus came back to life. Other than to Mary and the 12 disciples, he appeared to at least 500 others. His resurrection proved he was more powerful than death. When he returned to heaven, he sent the same Spirit that rose him from the dead to us. This is the Holy Spirit that believers in Jesus are given to help us pray, help us learn more of who God is, help us live more righteously, to give us eyes to see everything differently, and so on and so on. The Spirit is our helper. 

The believer takes part in God's reconciliation.

Now that we are given access to God the Father, because of the death of God the Son, through the help of God the Spirit, we get to see more of what Jesus meant when he said "I came so that you could have life to the fullest!" We get to watch, with new eyes, how God is pushing back the darkness in this broken world. We actively pursue what is good and are allowed in on enjoying the divine dance of the triune God--the same enjoyment that resulted in the creation of a perfect world (see above). This side of glory the pursuit of this is at times hard and draining, but we continue to fight knowing what God promises is good.

We wait and hope for glory. 

When surrounded in a world of shame, guilt, hiding, abuse, death, and disease, we wait for the day of glory the Lord has promised. The full and complete restoration of what is fractured to what was created will come, one day. We'll see it fully in the day of Christ's return or when we see him face to face in heaven. When the weight of this world holds us down, this is the hope we cling to.

All of these truths, and practical truths about living are known and found in the Bible. The Bible has supreme and ultimate authority because it is the word of God. For this blog, I'll be using the English Standard Version