A few weeks ago, I started a series introducing the core Christian message based on a talk I gave recently. Today, I continue this series. Last time, we looked briefly at what the Bible is and some historical facts about Jesus. Today, we’ll look briefly at the core of the Christian message, then in subsequent posts we’ll look at how this is explained in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) and in the book of Romans.

The core Christian message provides a worldview

Cartoons of Creation, Fall, Redemption and Restoration

The core Christian message centers around the word “gospel”, which in Greek is euangelion, meaning the “good news” of salvation through Jesus Christ. The gospel message addresses the key issues in the Christian worldview. As we saw before, a worldview addresses these key questions (as also nicely illustrated in the graphic shown above, from this article):

  • Creation: What was the world intended to be like, or how was it made?
  • The Fall: What went wrong? We look around us and obviously the world is filled with problems, suffering, and difficulty; why?
  • Redemption: What will fix these problems? How can the world be set right?
  • Restoration: What will the future look like? (Sometimes this is grouped together with Redemption.)

I’ll briefly summarize what the Bible says in each of these areas before getting to the rest of our series.

Creation: God made everything good

According to the Bible, God created the universe out of nothing, and he created everything good. As a result, He is, in a sense, the owner of everything. Much as a potter owns the pottery he makes, God owns us as an aspect of His creation. All of creation, then, belongs to God, and He deserves our worship and our obedience.

The fall: The first man and woman sinned

The first man and woman, Adam and Eve, sinned against God. Ever since then, we – all people – are born sinful, and we sin. Those two concepts are worth stating separately because our problem is not just sinful actions (“we sin”) but also sinful inclinations or desires (“we are sinful”). We have wrong desires, and therefore we act wrongly. Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the garden, and as a result, sin and death entered the world. And sin is hereditary, as parents can tell you. We don’t have to teach our children to do wrong, to lie, to be selfish; rather, we try to teach them not to.

The fall, though, is terrible news for each of us since God’s standard is perfection. To be right with God, we would need to be perfect, yet because of the fall, “to err is human”. Worse, we are rebels against God. He’s the ruler of the whole world, including us, yet we reject his rule and thus deserve his punishment.

Redemption: God sent a savior

God sent his son, Jesus Christ, to restore the broken relationship between God and us and to bear the punishment we deserved for our rebellion, so that we can be reconciled to God. God himself became man and lived among us, living a perfect and sinless life to fulfill God’s perfect standard. He alone completely lived up to God’s requirements in every respect, because he was the God-man. He was born sinless by virtue of being God in the flesh, and he alone had power to live a perfect life for this same reason. Then, he died on the cross, suffering God’s wrath for us in order to bear the punishment we deserved. This provides the opportunity for salvation – a restored relationship and a changed heart, as well as a new destiny – for all who trust in him.

Essentially, the work of Jesus provides the opportunity for a great trade of his righteousness for our sin. All who truly trust in him receive his righteousness, the very righteousness of God, while he takes away their sin. Salvation extends beyond the forgiveness of sins, though; the Bible explains that when we are saved, God actually begins to work inside us to change even our desires. So salvation means not just a rescue from our outward sins, but also from even our sinfulness.

Jesus’ work accomplishes salvation for all who truly trust in him, but such trust requires repentance – a turning away from our sin and a turning to Jesus Christ. It involves recognizing that we had been living our lives in rebellion, for ourselves, and turning away from this to submit to Jesus’ rule.

Christ died for our sins and was buried, but then he ultimately was raised from the dead. His resurrection is one of the most important aspects of the gospel, since it indicates that God accepted Christ’s sacrifice as being sufficient and also points to the fact that this life is only temporary. It provides a promise that those who believe will also one day be raised from the dead to be with him forever, while those who do not will be raised for punishment.

While this redemption does not fix everything wrong in the world, it does begin the process. The world we live in had been greatly corrupted by sin, but the work of Christ set in motion a process which will eventually be completed when he comes again to make the world to the way it was intended to be.

Restoration: God’s plans to finish the work

Salvation extends far beyond the present. The Bible explains that Jesus has already been victorious over sin and death, completing his work of salvation. However, part of his work is not yet complete. Christ now lives with God, but one day he will come again to restore creation to what it ought to be, making a new heavens and a new earth. He will set right all that remains broken in the world, removing all suffering, sorrow, and evil, while judging those who reject his salvation. This return will be both terrible and wonderful – terrible for those who reject him, yet wonderful for those who accept and repent.

This is far too short a discussion of these truths, and I’d love to talk with people in more depth about these issues. If you would like to know any more, or if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me.

The rest of this series

In my next post in this series, I will look at highlights from the Sermon on the Mount as recorded in Matthew 5-7 and show how this explains the gospel. Then, I’ll do the same from key passages in the book of Romans. Following that, I’ll address some of the questions I was asked.