God created the world to be the perfect place for humans to live in loving fellowship with Him and true community with one another. However, we rebelled against God and all of creation fell into sin and brokenness. The Gospel is the work of God, by His grace, saving His people from their rebellion against Him and the brokenness of the world and restoring them to a true community of loving fellowship with Him and one another. Our worship of God is our grateful response to His gracious, saving work in the Gospel.
Notice that the Gospel in not the work of man, it is the work of God. The Gospel is about what God does for us, not what we do for Him. The Gospel in NOT our working hard to satisfy God and, therefore, earning His love. The Gospel is also NOT working hard to satisfy the world and, therefore, earning the world's love. For love is not earned at all. Love is freely given. No, the Gospel is the Good News that God loves us even when we are unlovable and has done for us what we could not do for ourselves. We cannot save ourselves. We cannot heal our own brokenness or overcome our own shame. We cannot pay the price for our sin and rebellion against God. But God can.
So, what did God do? God loved us in the midst of our rebellion against Him and acted according to His love rather than our sin. God entered the world in Jesus Christ and, though He was without sin, Jesus took our place and suffered the punishment for all our sins in His death on the cross. And, after three days He rose again from the dead. Through His death and resurrection, Jesus defeated sin and death for all those who will abandon the impossible work of trying to satisfy God and the world and trust in His work in our place.
Jesus lived the perfectly obedient life that we cannot live and died the death that we should have died. He took on our brokenness, our shame, and our sins and gave us his healing, his integrity, and his loving relationship with the Father. The only proper response to this Gospel is to worship God for what He has done.
If you have grown weary of striving to please God or the world, and want to know more about this Gospel of what God does for us, we invite you to join us as we worship God together in true community with one another and loving fellowship with Him.
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