Finding Rest in Christ: The Gospel

For the rest of this month on the blog I want to present some encouragement to you in a multi-part series on resting and abiding in Christ. The blessed rest and joy of abiding in Christ is a theme that is so great and so life changing, that I want to wade more deeply into God’s truths about the dependent, gospel-charged Christian life. If God will grant to reveal His Person to you more fully and lavishly in this regard, YOU WILL NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN.

What a bold claim I make, but I testify from my own experience of God’s Spirit applying His words to pierce as far as the division of Amanda’s soul and spirit, changing my heart to know the true rest that comes from knowing Christ.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I will be posting a series of Scripture devotionals and (behind the scenes) offering prayer to our Father to reveal Himself to you in a beautiful and more intimate way.

May you know the rest promised to you by God.
May rivers of living water flow from your innermost being.
May you eat and be satisfied.
May you know that He is God.
May you trust, dwell, and delight in Him.
And may you abide in Him and He in you.

“Come, behold the works of the LORD, Who has wrought desolations in the earth. He makes wars to cease to the end of the earth; He breaks the bow and cuts the spear in two; He burns the chariots with fire. ‘Cease striving and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.’ The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our stronghold.” Psalm 46:8-10

Grace to you, and peace…
amanda

The Gospel of Jesus Christ

“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.

As I write to you on this dependent, resting-in-Christ Christian life, I begin with a very clear, careful, and simple explanation of the true Gospel of Christ. I find that many people are unclear as to what the Bible teaches about how to become a Christian and receive eternal life. I want to lay it out for you very clearly, dear friend.

Can you know Gospel-rest and abundant life apart from knowing Christ and receiving the glorious gospel of His plundering Hell on behalf of your soul? No, it is impossible to have peace with God until Jesus Christ IS your peace.

Until He saves your soul from the judgment and destruction that is DUE YOU, you will not find true rest in this life or in the one to come. My friend, here is the gospel message from Jesus in John 3:

(To understand Jesus’s remarks here, you must know a little background from Numbers 21:4-9. A quick summary: The people sinned, so God sent serpents that bit and killed many people. God told Moses to make a bronze serpent and to put it up on a pole. Anyone bitten by the deadly snakes could look up at the bronze serpent on the pole, and they would not die but LIVE.)

So, Jesus says,
“As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” John 3:1-21

Friend, you are a sinner (Romans 3:23). You are spiritually dead (Ephesians 2:1). You cannot heal yourself. No good works, none of your good deeds or morality will save your dying soul (Ephesians 2:8-9). You are like the people bitten by the serpent, except that the sting of sin that has mortally wounded you is much worse than the bite of a snake, because the sting of sin yields an eternal damnation and eternal death.

God says that the penalty for your sin is death (Romans 6:23). You will die, and then you will go to judgment (Hebrews 9:27). At judgment, unless your name has been inscribed by God in His book of life, you will receive a second death and be cast into the eternal Lake of Fire (Revelation 20:14-15). That’s the end. There will be no redemption and no second chance. These are God’s words, and He does not lie.

BUT GOD.

But God, who is rich in mercy to all who call upon Him, has provided a means for you to be saved from the wrath to come (Ephesians 2:4-7). He sacrificed His Son, Jesus, to be punished for your sin and my sin (1 Peter 2:24).

Your only hope is to trust in Christ, looking to the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, who was lifted up upon a cross to bear your sins, the One upon Whom God laid the sins of the world (Isaiah 53:6).

Jesus Christ gave Himself for your sins, and by trusting in Him for the forgiveness of your sins (Acts 10:43), looking with eyes of faith to the cross, calling upon Him for His mercy, HE WILL NEVER CAST YOU OUT (John 6:37). He will save your soul, redeem you from hell and the Lake of Fire, and give to you eternal life (John 5:24).

You see, God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world (although judgment IS coming at a later time), but God sent His Son into the world to SAVE the world (John 3:17). Jesus Christ is your Savior. His very name, Jesus, means, “GOD SAVES” (Matthew 1:21).

Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” There are not multiple means to reach peace with God. Trusting in Jesus is the only way. (John 14:6)

If you do not trust in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, you will be punished eternally in the Lake of Fire (Revelation 20:14-15). But, if you trust in Jesus Christ, calling on Him for deliverance and as your Savior, then you are not judged (John 3:18). Jesus Christ, the perfect One, was judged IN YOUR PLACE. He bore YOUR sin in HIS body on the cross so that you could LIVE. God made Jesus, who knew no sin, to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

Today is the day of salvation (2 Corinthians 6:2). If you have not trusted in Jesus Christ, do it today. The shaky crutch of morality and good deeds does not commend you to God (Isaiah 64:6), but rather keeps you separated from God and alone and without a Savior (Isaiah 59:2). Trust in HIS mercy and HIS goodness and believe on Christ, receiving as a gift His work on the cross in your place (John 1:12). He will plunge you beneath the flood of His mercy and grace, and the blood of Jesus will purify your sick and blackened soul to be white as snow, clean and pure through the sacrifice of the Son of God on your behalf.

By believing on Jesus Christ, the righteousness of the Son of God will be credited to you, and you become eternally and forever His child (John 1:12).

“Come now, and let us reason together,” says the LORD, “though your sins are as scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they will be like wool.” Isaiah 1:18

 

With much love and prayer and a heart full of gratitude to tell that wondrous story…
amanda

And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life. 1 John 5:11-13

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The next article in this series on Finding Rest in Christ is Abide in Him….