Christianity is good news for everyone. The message of Christianity is explained by the story-line of the Bible and centres on Jesus Christ and what he has done. This is sometimes called the ‘gospel’, a word that simply means ‘good news.’
At a personal level, this good news can be summarised under four main headings: God, People, Jesus, Response.
God is our loving creator. He made us in his image and we are accountable to him. But we have failed to worship and love God as we should. We are separated from God because of this and deserve his condemnation. Yet God has come to find us and save us. He became a man, Jesus of Nazareth, to live the life we could never live, a life without doing anything wrong, and he died the death we deserve to die, a death for all our wrongdoing. Through Jesus’ perfect life and obedience to God, he was the perfect sacrifice to take the punishment we deserve for our rebellion against God. We must respond to the good news of what God has done through Jesus’ death and resurrection if we are to be saved. We cannot be saved by our good works, but by turning from our sin and placing our faith in Jesus. When we do, God forgives us, accepts us, adopts us into his family and gives the Holy Spirit as the guarantee of eternal life with him in a new heaven and new earth. The alternative is that we are separated from the presence of God forever in hell.
Alongside this personal level, the Bible also teaches how Christianity is good news for our world. This is emphasised in plot-line of the Bible: Creation, Fall, Redemption, Restoration. The Bible describes the perfect beginning of God’s world, what went wrong, what God has done in Jesus to put things right and what will happen in the end.
Christianity is the best news ever! God is not only saving lost and broken people like us but he is restoring our broken world. Through Jesus Christ we can enjoy a relationship with God right now and can look forward with hope to being with him forever in his perfect new creation.