The gospel is “the power of God,” but it is salvation that this power is for. Whatever secondary blessings may flow from Christ, His mission was to save us from our sins. We will not understand Jesus Christ until we see that sin is the problem.
In baptism, the physical water itself does not wash away our sins. Our new lives are created “through faith in the powerful working of God” (Colossians 2:12). Baptism, then, is an act of trust, a placing of our faith in the promise of God to save us.
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 of sin will just get worse until the truth — the truth about God — is put back in its place.
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 truth of Jesus’ identity as “the Christ, the Son of God.”
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. That must change. Forgiven, we must learn to “live by faith in the Son of God.”
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 best, we obey. No matter how things look to us, we trust His love to bring us home.
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 it is a foretaste of the perfect relationship we’ll be able to have with Him in eternity.
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 of peace (which is a by-product) but the objective status of BEING justified with God.
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 the gospel was for all of mankind. God’s people were now ready to be called “Christians.”
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 Christ is not the best of many ways to return to God. He is the only way.
