What we lost in sin was not just biological life, but the life we would have had as “sons of God.” Jesus taught that this “eternal” kind of life can be given back to us — and His teaching is the only path to that life. We should pay attention!
What had to happen for us to enter God’s kingdom was the forgiveness of our sins. The means whereby God was able to do that was the death of His Son — and His grace consisted in the giving of that gift, thereby making our salvation possible.
Even to the Jews who took the prophets seriously, it needed to be shown that the death and resurrection of the Messiah were predicted by the prophets — and that Jesus had fulfilled not just some of the messianic prophecies but all of them.
The One whom David foresaw in Psalm 16:10 is the only person in the world who, having been killed, did not “see corruption.” His resurrection proved Him to be the Son of God. It proved everything about the gospel to be true. Therein lies our hope.
Although God might have let justice run its course, He was not willing to leave us lost. If we had ruined the perfection He had created us to enjoy, He would allow us to come back to Him — even if He had to take the punishment for our sin.
If we’ve obeyed the gospel, we are not any more alive physically, but we certainly possess a spiritual life we didn’t used to have. When we were baptized, God “raised us up with [Christ] and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”
Mankind never would have sinned if it had not believed the devil’s lie; so the only path out of sin is the one that leads back toward truth. The problem ...
John wrote about Jesus’ miracles “so that you may believe.” The miracles authenticated the truth of what Jesus claimed about Himself. Called “signs” by the gospel writers, they “signified” the ...
May we never underestimate the seriousness of what must happen to us in Christ. “Crucifixion” not too strong a word for it. It was distrust that drove us to sin. ...
In the world, obedience is often based on personal feelings or legal obligation, but in the gospel, it’s based on trust in God. Confident that His way is always the ...
Forgiven of past sins, the Christian can rejoice in the present grace and future hope of the gospel. The relationship we can now have with God is rich — and ...
When we obey the gospel and are justified with God, the result is that “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” This is not the subjective FEELING ...
The term “Christian” was first used in Antioch in Syria. Here, for the first time, a congregation was made up of both Jews and Gentiles, and it was clear that ...
Apart from Jesus Christ, there is no way back to God, no certainty of truth about God, and no life other than the desperate yearning of our earthly existence. Jesus ...
On Pentecost following Jesus’ resurrection, a large crowd in Jerusalem heard Peter preach the gospel of Christ. Many were “cut to the heart,” and no one in the history of ...
What is the meaning of the titles associated with the name of Jesus in the New Testament? Over sixty times He is called the “Lord Jesus Christ”? To see fully ...
God is at the center of both our problem and its solution. The gospel is not primarily about our broken social relationships. These are but symptoms of the real problem: ...
We were created for perfect joy with God, a joy not subject to change and decay. By our sin, the human race broke that perfection, but we still yearn for ...