During the past few months, my desire to hear good news has increased. One television station has been featuring a good news story every day, but there isn’t much of it otherwise, at least not about this life or current events. As a reporter told me, “If it bleeds it leads” with the assumption that people are attracted to tragedy, perhaps because it makes them feel superior about their own smaller problems.
Without intending to be pessimistic, there is bad news that affects everyone even if everyone refuses to admit it. The bad news is that no human being is perfect and as the Bible says, we have “all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” That S word comes from an ancient practice involving target practice with bow and arrow. If the arrow fell short of the target, the onlookers called “sinner, sinner.” These days, that word is seldom spoken even by onlookers. Sin is considered obsolete.
But it hasn’t gone away. Its biblical definition is from Isaiah 53:6. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way” meaning everyone lives by personal wants and wishes without considering why God created us or thinking of His desire for the way we ought to live. Running our own lives our own way is sin, but the last part of the verse is the GOSPEL, the good news: “And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
This good news is about Jesus and about “the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.” It is the remedy for the bad news yet only available to those who will admit that the bad news is real. If anyone thinks that does not happen, consider how many people still claim that reports of deaths during this Covid pandemic are fictitious and this world-wide event is a world-wide hoax.
Sin is no hoax. I struggle with it often, thinking my way is okay — at least until I realize it is running contrary to God’s way. And in the struggle, God blesses me with reminders of the good news, that my sin was the reason Jesus Christ came to earth, lived a perfect life, died for all the sin of all people — not just mine, and rose from the dead to give hope to a world totally buried in bad news.
And this is the power of God. We don’t have the power to overcome sin. We don’t even want to. Having my own way is as deeply ingrained in me as my DNA, as ‘natural’ as breathing. Without Jesus Christ and the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, there is no hope of overcoming it.
Jesus came and announced, “The time has come, the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news.” He proved the truth of it by how He lived and how He died and by how He changes the lives of those who believe it. Christians begin to put aside that old life of doing things ‘my way’ and living instead under the power and leadership of our Lord and Savior.
The gospel is associated with wellness and well-being. Matthew 9:35 demonstrates this link: “Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction.”
The gospel marks believers with a seal of ownership and of a changed life:
Ephesians 1:13. “In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit . . . .”
Mark 8:35. “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.”
It also gives Christians the desire and a commission task to tell others this good news:
1 Thessalonians 2:9. “For you remember, brothers, our labor and toil: we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God.”
Matthew 24:14. “And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”
But that bad news persists in those who don’t see or admit the need for this good news and because of this, the good news is hidden from them. 2 Corinthians 4:3 says, “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.” Again, if I will not admit my need, there is no hope of being granted the remedy.
GAZE INTO HIS GLORY. The gospel is the glory of God. He grants it to undeserving, unable-to-fix-it-ourselves sinful people, but only those who are honest with themselves and with God. As I read the Bible each day, I can see how far short I fall, but God also shows me what Jesus did for me, on my behalf, what I could not do and could never earn or deserve. This is the gospel, the grace of God and my eternal hope and promise from Him who loved me and died for me. Oh how I need Jesus.
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