REPENT AND BELIEVE

A perfect, loving, sovereign, eternal God created the heavens, the earth, the seas, and all the things that are in them. He created the birds of the air, the creatures of the seas, the creatures that walk and dwell on the land, and He created man. He created man in His likeness and in His image and planted man in the midst of His creation to subdue it and have dominion over it. 

Man was to be the overseer and caretaker of God's earth. Man was given a wife by God Himself and together they were to multiply and fill the very earth they were created to subdue. Thanks to God, they had everything they could ever want or need. God gave it to them. The only thing that wasn't for them, was the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. 

God gave the man and the woman a clear warning that if they ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they would surely die. Outside of this one command, they were free to do all that they wanted in God's perfect picture. 

But Satan, the devil, came to the woman in the form of a serpent and tempted her to eat of the tree God forbade them to eat from; she ate of it and convinced her husband to eat of it, disobeying God and ushering sin into the world. Their disobedience to God brought sin into the world, and this one act set the stage for our fallen world. 

Man lost his perfect moral standing with God and sin entered into him bringing forth death, sickness, corruption, and every kind of evil. Human hands influenced by sin would bring about the pestilence, the evil, the chaos, the destruction, that marks our history since the fall of man.

Because of our fallen state, we are doomed to sin against the God who created everything good for His pleasure and delight and for ours as well, and the day will come where He will end sin once and for all. He will judge the world, and His wrath will be poured out over it bringing it to its end. 

He will judge those who came and went, those in the here and now, and those who are to come, on the day that He has reserved for His judgment. Not a single one of us can escape the wrath of God because we all sin against Him at some point or another. God has no sin. He hates sin. He is going to judge sin, and He is going to pay sin the wages of death it deserves. That means death for us all. A physical one and a spiritual one. 

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Considering the fact that we all sin, this is unquestionably bad news for us all. Our inability to keep God's moral law perfectly sealed our fate, but there is good news. 

The good news is this: For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. God in His love for us, sent His Son Jesus Christ, to be the sacrificial atonement for our sins. 

God sent His Son Jesus Christ. He was born of a virgin. Lived a sinless life on our behalf. Endured the punishment for sin to the satisfaction of God's wrath on our behalf. He laid His life down crucified to a cross for our sins and our transgressions. Only to rise from the grave three days later, conquering sin and death in the process. He sits at the right hand of the Father with all glory and power, possessing the only name under heaven by which we can be saved. 

On the cross, Jesus Christ became our sin so that in turn, we can become God's righteousness in Him. With this, we receive forgiveness for our sins and the promise of eternal life. It is appointed unto man to die once and then comes the judgment. 

We cannot escape a physical death. It is an established consequence of sin. But by the power of Jesus Christ and His finished work of salvation on the cross, we can be saved from a spiritual one. This spiritual death being eternal separation from God to a place where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 

Eternal separation from God is the fate reserved for the one who rejects the gift of salvation granted to us in Jesus Christ. But to the one who receives this gift, eternal life with God awaits them. By the disobedience of one man, sin entered the earth and brought death to all. But by the obedience of another, Jesus Christ, salvation entered the earth as a gift to all who believe. 

This is the love and grace of God. This is the good news of Jesus Christ. This is the gospel. So, repent of your sins and believe in the gospel for your salvation today!