We believe that the living God, the Creator, saves through Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. God freely offers salvation to everyone. We receive this gift from God through faith—trusting, believing, and being loyal to God. Salvation is rescue from sin and death. It includes forgiveness, new life, being transformed to be more like Jesus, and life with God that never ends.
A good summary of the basic Christian story, the story of the Bible is “Good News, Bad News, Good News.”
Good News: Created in God’s Image
“So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27)
The good news about you is that you are made in God’s image. Human beings are created to relate to God, to reflect God’s glory and to represent God as caretakers of creation. We’re made to live in relationship with the Lord God. We’re intended to praise God and show his loving and faithful character to each other. And we’re meant to extend God’s love and care to other people and all creation.
Bad News: Sin Distorts the Image
“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).
The bad news is that almost from the beginning, humans have chosen to misuse the freedom God gave us. We exchange the kind of world where God is the center for the kind of world where we are the center. Sin is more than just bad deeds. Sin is an infection that corrupts God’s good creation and defaces God’s image in us. Sin alienates and separates us from God, from each other and from our true selves. On our own, we can’t return to God and we don’t want to.
Good News: God Keeps Coming to Us
“God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19).
The second good news is that God doesn’t leave us on our own. God keeps calling and searching and reaching to us. God’s grace, that is God’s active love and working of God’s Spirit, comes to every person. It restores our freedom to say yes to God if we will. When we surrender to God’s grace, we’re forgiven and given new life. Then we spend the rest of this life and into eternity in the adventure of life with God.
You can tell God right now that you want to know him, to return to him, to live life with him. Pray something like this: “God, I know I need you. Please forgive me. By your grace, I turn to you now. I receive your gift of salvation, forgiveness, new life. I give myself to you to live as your person from now on. Thank you. Amen!”
(To learn more, see this message: Good News-Bad News-Good News)
