Something I learned today is that I need to learn how to apply the Gospel to myself when I sin. It’s not enough to know the Gospel, but we also have to know how to practically apply its truth. Today I sinned, I was selfish and didn’t do something I think God called me to do. So how do I apply the Gospel to myself in this moment? Jesus died for my selfishness so that the penalty of my selfishness is already paid for. So in other words, God isn’t mad at me for being selfish because he already poured out all his anger on Jesus. What else? I’m forgiven for being selfish. God forgives me. What about the regret of not obeying? Jesus obeyed perfectly so his righteousness is accounted to me. I’m not saved by how well I obey but by how well Jesus obeyed on my behalf. Now for the regret? “God has been so good to you and you’re selfish. Matt would’ve been generous. Others have shared with you.” Maybe there will be more opportunities for good works, and maybe this was a lesson to teach me to give more freely so next time I’ll be more generous. Maybe God is teaching me.
Paul in Romans 7 comes to mind.
“For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing....What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
Romans 7:19, 24-25 NIV
This is a little different because I wanted to be selfish. But nevertheless, Paul looks at Jesus.
I think I need to keep practicing this. How do you apply the Gospel to yourself when you sin?
What exactly do Christians mean when they talk about the “gospel of Jesus Christ”? Since the word “gospel” means “good news,” when Christians talk about the gospel, they’re simply telling the good news about Jesus! It’s a message from God saying, “Good news! Here is how you can be saved from my judgment!” That’s an announcement you can’t afford to ignore.
Why Is the Gospel Good News?
So, what is the good news about Jesus Christ?
Since the earliest Christians announced the good news about Jesus, it has been organized around these questions:
Who made us, and to whom are we accountable?
What is our problem?
What is God’s solution to our problem?
How can I be included in his solution?
Christians through the centuries since Christ have answered those questions with the same truth from the Bible.
We are accountable to God.
Our problem is our sin against him.
God’s solution is salvation through Jesus Christ.
We come to be included in that salvation by faith and repentance.
Let’s summarize those points like this: God, Mankind, Jesus Christ, and Our Response.
God
The first thing to know about the good news of Jesus is that “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). Everything starts from that point, so if you get that point wrong then everything else that follows will be wrong. Because God created everything—including us—he has the right to tell us how to live. You have to understand that in order to understand the good news about Jesus. To understand just how glorious and life-giving the gospel of Jesus Christ is, we have to understand that God is also holy and righteous. He is determined never to ignore or tolerate sin. Including ours!
Mankind
When God created the first human beings, Adam and Eve, he intended for them to live under his righteous rule in perfect joy—obeying him and living in fellowship with him. When Adam disobeyed God, though, and ate the one fruit that God had told him not to eat, that fellowship with God was broken. Moreover, Adam and Eve had declared rebellion against God. They were denying his authority over their lives.
It’s not just Adam and Eve who are guilty of sin. The Bible says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Sin is the rejection of God himself and his authority over those to whom he gives life.
Once you understand sin in that light, you begin to understand why “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). That’s not just physical death, but spiritual death, a forceful separating of our sinful, rebellious selves from the presence of God forever. The Bible teaches that the final destiny for unbelieving sinners is eternal, active judgment in a place called “hell.”
But . . .
Jesus Christ
The word “Christ” means “anointed one,” referring to anointing a king with oil when he is crowned. So, when we say “Jesus Christ,” we’re saying that Jesus is a King!
When Jesus began his public ministry, he told the people, “The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the good news!” As Jesus died on a cross, the awful weight of all our sins fell on his shoulders. The sentence of death God had pronounced against rebellious sinners struck. And Jesus died. For you and me!
But the story doesn’t end there. Jesus the Crucified is no longer dead. The Bible tells us that he rose from the grave. Jesus’s rising from the grave was God’s way of saying, “What Jesus claimed about who he is and what he came to do is true!”
Our Response
What does God expect us to do with the information that Jesus died in our place so we can be saved from God’s righteous wrath against our sins? He expects us to respond with repentance and faith.
To repent of our sins means to turn away from our rebellion against God. Repentance doesn’t mean we’ll bring an immediate end to our sinning. It does mean, though, that we’ll never again live at peace with our sins.
Not only that, but we also turn to God in faith. Faith is reliance. It’s a promise-founded trust in the risen Jesus to save you from your sins. If God is ever to count us righteous, he’ll have to do it on the basis of someone else’s record, someone who’s qualified to stand in as our substitute. And that’s what happens when a person is saved by Jesus: All our sins are credited to Jesus who took the punishment for them, and the perfect righteousness of Jesus is then credited to us when we place our trust in what he has done for us! That’s what faith means—to rely on Jesus, to trust in him alone to stand in our place and win a righteous verdict from God!
Not what my hands have done Can save my guilty soul; Not what my toiling flesh has borne Can make my spirit whole. Not what I feel or do Can give me peace with God; Not all my prayers, And sighs and tears Can bear my awful load.
Thy work alone, O Christ, Can ease this weight of sin Thy blood alone O Lamb of God, Can give me peace within. Thy love to me O God, Not mine, O Lord, to Thee Can rid me of This dark unrest, And set my spirit free!
Thy grace alone, O God, To me can pardon speak; Thy power alone O Son of God, Can this sore bondage break. No other work, save Thine, No other blood will do, No strength save that, Which is divine, Can bear me safely through.
“so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.”
Hebrews 9:28 ESV
What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul! What wondrous love is this, O my soul! What wondrous love is this, that caused the Lord of bliss To bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul To bear the dreadful curse for my soul!
When I was sinking down, sinking down, sinking down When I was sinking down, sinking down When I was sinking down, beneath God's righteous frown Christ laid aside His crown for my soul for my soul Christ laid aside His crown for my soul
To God and to the Lamb I will sing, I will sing To God and to the Lamb I will sing To God and to the Lamb, Who is the great I AM While millions join the theme, I will sing, I will sing While millions join the theme, I will sing
And when from death I'm free, I'll sing on, I'll sing on And when from death I'm free, I'll sing on And when from death I'm free… I'll sing His love for me And through eternity I'll sing on, I'll sing on And through eternity I'll sing on
“Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18)
O precious is the flow That makes me white as snow No other fount I know Nothing but the blood of Jesus
What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus For my pardon this I sing Nothing but the blood of Jesus For my cleansing this my plea Nothing but the blood of Jesus
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Nothing can for sin atone Nothing but the blood of Jesus Not of good that I have done Nothing but the blood of Jesus This is all my hope and peace Nothing but the blood of Jesus This is all my righteousness Nothing but the blood of Jesus ~Nothing but the blood of Jesus lyrics
“For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”
Colossians 1:19-20 NIV
“The gospel encourages me to rest in my righteous standing with God, a standing which Christ Himself has accomplished and always maintains for me. I never have to do a moment’s labor to gain or maintain my justified status before God! Freed from the burden of such a task, I now can put my energies into enjoying God, pursuing holiness, and ministering God’s amazing grace to others.
The Gospel also reminds me that my righteous standing with God always holds firm regardless of my performance, because my standing is based solely on the work of Jesus and not mine. On my worst days of sin and failure, the gospel encourages me with God’s unrelenting grace towards me. On my best days of victory and usefulness, the gospel keeps me relating to God solely on the basis of Jesus’ righteousness and not mine.”
~ A Gospel Primer by Milton Vincent
“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,”
Romans 5:1 NIV
“I am saved for only one reason, 2000 years ago the son of God bled and died for me”
“The Gospel of Jesus Christ is God is just, and man is radically depraved and worthy of all condemnation. That in order to forgive men, God’s justice had to be first satisfied, and that was done on the cross where Christ stood in the law place of his people, bore their sin and was crushed under the full weight of God’s wrath against them. On dying he paid the price in full, he’s risen from the dead and now all men everywhere may be saved through faith, through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ...”
~Paul Washer
“The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”
John 1:29 ESV
In these two chapters God creates all of the universe and everything in it (Genesis 1:1), including the first man and woman, Adam and Eve. God created Adam and Eve with purpose. He called them to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28) and fill the earth with their offspring. He gave them the mission of taking care of the earth and tending the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:15.)
God made them to be in complete fellowship with Him and with each other. Their nakedness (Genesis 2:25) represented the fact that they had no sin, therefore no shame, therefore nothing to hide before God or each other. They regularly communed with God in the garden and had sheer bliss, pure happiness and unadulterated joy. It was during this time that they were living everyday as God intended, in right relationship with each other, God and His creation. The only command God gave to them was not to eat from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
In the same way God made us to be in fellowship with Him. His original plan was that you and I were in absolute and perfect relationship with Him and with each other in total unity. God created us to be in harmony with all of heaven and all of earth. But that plan was disrupted by one evil act thousands and thousands of years ago.
Our sins separate us from God. (Genesis 3)
When Adam and Eve were tempted by Satan and ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 3:6), and thereby sinned, they immediately became aware of their “error.” They sewed fig leaves together to cover their shame and hid in the garden from God (Genesis 3:7,8). Now they were hiding from the one that they used to fellowship with regularly. Men and women have been hiding from God ever since, covering their sin and shame with the fig leaves of religion or philosophy.
God confronted them face to face. As a result of their sin there were immediate and future consequences. The immediate consequences were being banished from the garden (Genesis 3:23,24), having difficulty in childbirth (Genesis 3:16) and our work turning from a joy that we love to a job that we hate (Genesis 3:17-19).
The future consequence for Adam and Eve was physical death. God had promised in Genesis 2:17 that the day he sinned by eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that he would “surely die.” Spiritually Adam and Eve died the day they sinned in the garden. Their souls became immediately polluted by sin and selfishness. As a result all of their offspring (and that includes you and me) were born sinful and selfish. Through Adam every person ever born is born deprived and depraved, deprived of God’s fellowship and depraved to the core (Romans 5:12-14).
When confronted by God the blame game begins. Adam blames Eve (Genesis 3:12) and Eve blames the snake (Genesis 3:13). Humanity has been playing the blame game ever since. What began as paradise unraveled with a single choice to disobey God and listen to Satan instead. Every war, famine, argument, sin and tragedy can be traced back to the garden of Eden where Adam and Eve chose to turn their backs on God for a taste of fruit.
Sins cannot be removed by good deeds. (Genesis 4 – Malachi 4)
From the beginning humanity has attempted to remove the stain of sin by good deeds. When Cain offered God vegetables as an appeasement for his sin God rejected it (Genesis 4:1-4). Cain was infuriated and killed his brother Abel.
In Exodus, the second book of the Bible, God gave the Israelites the 10 Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17), not to save them from their sin, but to show them that they couldn’t live up to his perfect standards on their own (Galatians 3:23-24). Instead of looking to Him in faith many of the Jews looked to themselves and thought they could please God in their own strength. But God saw their “righteous” deeds like filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6). Even the best of their good deeds were corrupted by selfish motives.
In Leviticus, the third book of the Bible, God gave the Israelites the sacrificial system. Every time a Jew sinned he or she was to sacrifice a goat without any blemishes (Leviticus 4:27-31). Think about that. If you were a Jew in the Old Testament and had to make a sacrifice every time you lied, lusted, gossiped, complained or argued you would soon run out of goats. Other offerings included offerings of bulls and sheep.
The sacrificial system was meant to point inward, upward and forward. It pointed inward to convince you of your sinfulness. If you were honest before God then you would soon realize that you could never make enough sacrifices for your sin. It pointed upward to make you trust in God for your salvation instead of sacrifices that you could make (Psalm 51:16,17). It pointed forward to the ultimate sacrifice of the lamb of God, Jesus Christ, who would someday come to take away the sin of the world (John 1:29).
The rest of the Old Testament tells the story of the Jewish people, some of whom realized they were sinners and needed God to save them (Psalm 51:1,2) and most of whom trusted in their own goodness instead of the mercy and grace of God (Isaiah 64:6).
Paying the price for sin, Jesus died and rose again. (Matthew – Luke)
When Jesus came to the earth he came as the fulfillment of the law (Matthew 5:17) and the ultimate sacrifice (Luke 24:46). He lived the perfect life that we could not live and died in our place, for our sin. When he died upon the cross he screamed the words “It is finished” (John 19:30). What he meant by these three words was that the price for our sins was paid completely. He was fully God and entirely man. As a perfect human he could die for other humans. As the true and living God his payment for sin was infinite.
Jesus rose from the dead three days after he was murdered on the cross (Mark 16:6). He was seen by over 500 witnesses (I Corinthians 15:6) on at least 12 separate occasions over the course of forty days (Acts 1:3). Because he died our sins are paid for entirely. Because he rose from the dead we know that Jesus was who he claimed to be, God in the flesh.
Everyone who trusts in Him alone has eternal life. (John)
The amazing thing about eternal life is that it is a free gift given to us by God through faith alone and not by any of our good deeds (Ephesians 2:8,9). Jesus paid the price for our sins when he died on the cross and all we must do is receive the gift of forgiveness through faith. When we believe that Jesus died for our sins and trust in Him alone we receive eternal life, are passed out of death into life and are guaranteed a home in heaven (John 5:24).
Eternal life is not achieved by good deeds but received through faith. It’s not a matter of trying but trusting. When we believe we receive the forgiveness of sins and the gift of eternal life. Almost the entire New Testament is dedicated to talking about this eternal life and the implications of it in our everyday lives. From John through Jude the disciples of Jesus show us how to live like Jesus intended, serving each other in love. This is the heart of eternal life!
Life with Jesus starts now and lasts forever. (Acts – Revelation)
Because Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead we will be with Jesus forever in heaven. When we trust in Jesus we enter into a personal, permanent relationship with God called “eternal life.”
Part of the reality of eternal life is that it doesn’t start after you die but as soon as you believe (John 10:10). This life is the joy of a real, exciting relationship with Jesus every single day through prayer, worship and living in the strength that God provides through his Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18).
The other part of the reality of eternal life is that all who have it will be with Jesus forever and ever in heaven someday. Once we receive it is ours forever and we are his forever!
The last chapter of the last book of the Bible makes it clear that we will “rule and reign forever” with Jesus (Revelation 22:5). In essence the last chapter in the story of the Bible concludes by saying, “and they lived happily ever after.”
"he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit,whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior," Titus 3:5-6
“Jesus is the true and better Adam who passed the test in the garden and whose obedience is imputed to us.
Jesus is the true and better Abel who, though innocently slain, has blood now that cries out, not for our condemnation, but for acquittal.
Jesus is the true and better Abraham who answered the call of God to leave all the comfortable and familiar and go out into the void not knowing wither he went to create a new people of God.
Jesus is the true and better Isaac who was not just offered up by his father on the mount but was truly sacrificed for us. And when God said to Abraham, “Now I know you love me because you did not withhold your son, your only son whom you love from me,” now we can look at God taking his son up the mountain and sacrificing him and say, “Now we know that you love us because you did not withhold your son, your only son, whom you love from us.”
Jesus is the true and better Jacob who wrestled and took the blow of justice we deserved, so we, like Jacob, only receive the wounds of grace to wake us up and discipline us.
Jesus is the true and better Joseph who, at the right hand of the king, forgives those who betrayed and sold him and uses his new power to save them.
Jesus is the true and better Moses who stands in the gap between the people and the Lord and who mediates a new covenant.
Jesus is the true and better Rock of Moses who, struck with the rod of God’s justice, now gives us water in the desert.
Jesus is the true and better Job, the truly innocent sufferer, who then intercedes for and saves his stupid friends.
Jesus is the true and better David whose victory becomes his people’s victory, though they never lifted a stone to accomplish it themselves.
Jesus is the true and better Esther who didn’t just risk leaving an earthly palace but lost the ultimate and heavenly one, who didn’t just risk his life, but gave his life to save his people.
Jesus is the true and better Jonah who was cast out into the storm so that we could be brought in.
Jesus is the real Rock of Moses, the real Passover Lamb, innocent, perfect, helpless, slain so the angel of death will pass over us. He’s the true temple, the true prophet, the true priest, the true king, the true sacrifice, the true lamb, the true light, the true bread.” -Tim Keller
“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree"— so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.”
Galatians 3:13-14 ESV
“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,”
1 Corinthians 15:3-4 ESV
“In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight”
Ephesians 1:7-8 ESV
God is perfect, and he created everything. Since God created everything, he is in charge (Genesis 1:1).
Humans are not perfect. We break God’s laws and do things that make God angry all the time. The Bible calls this sin, and we are all sinners (Romans 3:23).
When we sin and disobey God, we deserve to be punished. The Bible says that the punishment for disobeying God is death — separation from God forever in hell (Romans 6:23).
Because God loves us, he provided a way for us to be rescued from sin and punishment. He sent his son Jesus to Earth. Jesus is 100% human AND 100% God, so he is perfect. He lived a perfect life and never sinned. He kept all of God’s laws (John 3:16, Hebrews 4:15)
Since Jesus never sinned, he did not deserve to die, but he willingly chose to take our punishment and die in our place — as our substitute (John 3:16, Romans 5:8).
When Jesus died, he didn’t stay dead. God brought him back to life after 3 days, and he is still alive today! This shows us that God accepted Jesus perfect sacrifice for our sin (1 Peter 3:18).
In order to be rescued from sin and punishment, you need to ask God to forgive you for breaking his laws and sinning, believe that Jesus lived a perfect life, died, and came back to life after 3 days, and tell God that you want him to be in charge of your life (Romans 10:9).
-Centrikid Camps
“For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him,”
