The Good News of Jesus Christ
“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all.”
The Bible teaches that God created humanity upright and perfect. He gave them a righteous law that would have led to life if they had kept it but threatened death if they broke it. Yet they did not remain for long in this position of honor. Satan used the craftiness of the serpent to seduce Eve, who then seduced Adam. Adam acted without any outside compulsion and deliberately broke the law of their creation and the command given to them by eating the forbidden fruit. God was pleased, in keeping with his wise and holy counsel, to permit this act, because he had purposed to direct it for his own glory.
By God’s appointment, they were the root and the representatives of the whole human race. Because of this, the guilt of their sin was accounted, and their corrupt nature passed on, to all their offspring who descended from them. We are now conceived in sin and are by nature children of wrath, the servants of sin, and partakers of death and all other miseries—spiritual, temporal, and eternal—unless the Lord Jesus sets us free.
All of our sin arises from this first sin of Adam and Eve. Because if it, we are naturally biased against all that is good, and completely inclined toward all that is evil. The Penalty for our sin is death and eternal separation from God in Hell.
We need to be saved, and we can only be saved through faith in Jesus Christ. “…there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”- Acts 4:12
“For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s (Christ Jesus) obedience the many will be made righteous.” – Romans 5:19
The Lord Jesus willingly came to save us from our sins. He experienced the punishment that we deserved and that we should have endured and suffered. He was made sin and a curse for us. He endured extremely heavy sorrows in his soul and extremely painful sufferings in his body. He was crucified and died and remained in a state of death, yet his body did not decay. On the third day he arose from the dead with the same body in which he suffered. In this body he also ascended into heaven, where he sits at the right hand of his Father, interceding. He will return to judge men and angels at the end of the age.
The Lord Jesus has fully satisfied the justice of God, obtained reconciliation, and purchased an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven for all those given to him by the Father. He has accomplished these things by his perfect obedience and sacrifice of himself, which he once for all offered up to God through the eternal Spirit.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. ” – Ephesians 2:8-9
What is Faith in Jesus Christ? Faith in Jesus Christ is saving grace, whereby we receive
and rest upon him alone for salvation, trusting him to forgive our
sins, on basis of Christ’s death in our place on the cross.
“Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved” – Acts 16:31
What is Repentance?
Repentance unto life is a saving grace, by which a sinner, out of a true sense of his sin, and apprehension of the mercy
of God in Christ, does, with grief and hatred of his sin, turn
from it to God, pursuing a new obedience to God by the Power of the Holy Spirit.
Sources
Adapted from the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith in Modern English, and The Baptist Catechism.