Made for God’s presence
In the beginning, God created all things. The pinnacle of His creation was humanity, whom He made in His image as male and female. As His image bearers, God tasked mankind with ruling over the earth.
God intended us to fulfill our purpose in His loving and life-giving presence. God formed us for relationship with Himself.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
Separated by sin
Yet the first humans rebelled against God, incurring the just condemnation, death. Physical death is the temporal expression of a deeper spiritual reality: a life separated from God, the source of life and goodness. This separation is experienced now through alienation from God and forever in the place the Bible calls hell.
They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.
Human rebellion is called sin. Sin is doing, saying, or desiring anything that is not in accordance with God’s will. Sin is breaking God’s law. All humanity inherits a fallen nature corrupted by sin and thus willingly rejects God as Creator and Lord over all. Here then is the great dilemma.
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The result is a world where every individual has earned eternal death. The whole world stands guilty before God, the righteous judge.
And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.
The apostle Paul proclaims to the Athenians that God “has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:31). Who is this man? His name is Jesus Christ.
Rescued by Christ
The gospel proclaims that God Himself entered the world as a man, born of a virgin, to rescue humanity from their sin. Thus, Christ is truly God and truly man. In His earthly life, He lived without sin, earning a righteousness for humanity. He then chose to be condemned as a sinner and crucified on a Roman cross in place of sinners.
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.
Two thousand years ago, the God who created us to know Him faced the justice we deserve for our rebellion against Him. Jesus Christ died in our place so that we might not have to face death. He was buried, and three days later He rose again, vindicating whom He said He was, God in the flesh, and His work: He defeated death and made a way for humanity to be reconciled to their Creator.
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.
Respond in faith
So what is our response? This reconciliation to God is for anyone who would repent of their sin against God and trust in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.
Christ will forgive you of your sins and give you the hope of everlasting life if you confess that you have sinned against Him and that you need Him to save you.
If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
