God is alive!  He is the creator and the sustainer of all things and all people, and He continues to actively care for all of His creation.  He is eternal (without beginning or end), all-powerful, all-knowing, and is fully present in all places at all times, and He will hear anyone who truly calls on His Name in prayer.  And yet His Being utterly transcends our understanding.  He has revealed Himself as one God, yet existing as three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  We can never hope to fully understand this.  And while God is essentially a God of love, He is also a Holy God.  This means that He cannot allow evil to remain in His presence, and that His righteous nature requires Him to be just.  Since God has the full range of emotions that you and I also have, when he sees sin, evil and injustice in the world, it makes Him angry.  And while He does not enjoy it (since He is basically merciful), it is also His nature to punish sin.

God has spoken!  He has dramatically broken into human history, and has inspired men to record His words and activities in the Bible.  The 39 books of the Old Testament and the 27 books of the New Testament teach us all we need to know and believe in order to live in this present world, as well as in God's eternal Kingdom in Heaven after this life.  The very words of these writings were inspired by God's own Holy Spirit, so they are completely free from error, and everything they say points ultimately to our Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus is God in human form!  In the ultimate act of self-revelation, God manifested Himself by becoming a human being.  He came to earth by being conceived through a miracle of His own Holy Spirit in the womb of a virgin girl named Mary.  He lived as Jesus of Nazareth, fully God and yet fully man.  He lived a completely sinless life, and He demonstrated the He was both the Son of God and the Christ (the Messiah, or "Annointed One") Who was predicted by the Old Testament prophets through His miracles, His teachings, and ultimately through His resurrection from the dead.

Jesus paid the penalty for our sins!  In the person of Jesus Christ, the love of God and the holiness of God come together.  So great was His love for sinful human beings that Jesus voluntarily submitted to the torture of death on a Roman cross.  While on that cross, God the Father laid upon Him the penalty for all of our sins.  He stood in our place, shedding His blood as our substitute.  When the price for our salvation was fully paid, He gave up His spirit into the Father's hands.  Three days later, He resurrected Himself from the dead in His original physical body, through the power of the Holy Spirit, proving that God had accepted His sacrifice on our behalf.  He appeared to hundreds of witnesses!  Later He ascended, in full view of His followers, into Heaven where He took His seat at the right hand of God.  There He serves as the Advocate and High Priest for all who trust in Him.

We desperately needed Christ to do this for us!  Even though man and woman were created in the image of God, they turned away from Him in a horrible rebellion, trying to become their own gods.  Thus our first parents forever lost their original moral purity, righteousness, and physical immortality, not only for themselves, but for all their descendants as well.  As a result, we are all born into this world spiritually "dead," separated from God by a nature that is utterly selfish, and we ultimately choose to follow only our own desires rather than God's.  While we are all still capable of doing truly good things, and we still exhibit traces of compassion, and we are even still capable of self-sacrifice, these are mere remnants of the original glory of mankind.  At the inner-most core of our inborn natures, we live only for ourselves, have little real compassion for others, and often inflict the most cruel forms of hatred on those around us.  If left to ourselves, apart from God's sustaining grace, we would have degenerated into the worst forms of evil long ago.  Therefore each of us richly deserves the spiritual death we have inherited, and unless something is done to save us, we will each be punished with eternal separation from God.

God commands you to believe this Good News!  You cannot atone for your sins through your own good deeds, or by keeping God's Law, and there is not enough goodness in your soul to balance the evil, let alone overcome it.  You can never fully pay for your own sins, because no matter how much you pay, sin remains in you, and you will continue to sin again.  Your only hope is if Jesus Christ's sacrifice on the cross counts on your behalf.  You can only escape eternal punishment if His death paid for your penalty.  And you can only be clean in God's presence if His Son's blood wipes your sins away.  He is the eternal God in human form, and only He is capable of paying what you owe.  And the only way His payment will count for you is if you believe -- that is, if you trust Christ's death on the cross to wipe away your sins.  Then and only then will you truly experience God's forgiveness, mercy, and grace in your life.  Then you will have eternal life!

If you are a believer, you are also a new person!  Everyone who believes is "in Christ," and everyone who is in Christ is part of His new creation!  As a believer, you have been "born again!"  God has given you a new heart, and He has written His laws upon it.  It's not up to you to do these things for yourself, because God has already accomplished them within your spirit, and is continuing the work of improving your character.  Sin still dwells in you, and you are still capable of major moral lapses.  There may even be times when you seem to wander far from God and into sin, but the new heart inside of you will keep pulling you back toward God.  God allows many things to happen in your life to help you mature spiritually, even things that are unpleasant or traumatic, and yet you have no desire to depart from Him.  You are now one of God's children, you have the nature of His family, and you can no longer give yourself over to a life of sin because it goes against your very being.  You are also forever grateful, because you know that whatever happens to you, or whatever you do, He will never desert you.

If you are a believer, you are part of a wonderful family!  The Bible calls this family "the church," or "Christ's body" -- and you are part of it!  God has given you spiritual brothers and sisters to help you along the way.  Each of these precious people has his or her own spiritual gift and place in Christ's body for the purpose of strengthening and encouraging you in your faith.  And you have your own spiritual gift as well, so that you can do the same for others.  God deliberately designed His church so that we would need each other.  A spiritual unity exists between you and other believers, whether it's obvious to you or not, and because of this God wants you to work at keeping the peace with others in God's family.  As a symbol of membership in God's family, Jesus commanded us to be Baptized.  He also wants you to spend regular time with your brothers and sisters, in order to actively share with them the things you have in common because of Christ.  Down throughout history, Christians have met together on the first day of the week.  Jesus also commanded us to regularly share in the observance of Communion, or the Lord's Supper, an act of worship that reminds us of what He did for us on the cross.  We are also to make sure we receive regular instruction from the Bible from those who have the gift of teaching.  When we sin against our fellow Christians -- or anyone else, for that matter -- we should promptly make amends.  When others sin against us, we should be ready to overlook it in love, and be equally ready to forgive, because God readily forgives us.  Sometimes a brother or sister might sin in such a way that it requires us to confront him or her about it, and if that person does not repent the whole church will need to get involved.  This is called "church discipline," and we should beware of people and churches that abuse it.  But we shouldn't neglect it, either, because the signs of a healthy local church include the practice of church discipline when necessary, along with Baptism, prayer, the Lord's Supper, Bible teaching, and spiritual fellowship.

Jesus is coming again!  The first time He came to accomplish salvation for us on the cross.  The next time He comes it will be to complete our salvation, by resurrecting us from the dead and bringing us into His eternal heavenly kingdom where we will rejoice forever!  But He will also come to judge both the living and the dead.  All those who rejected God will be resurrected as well, but they will be sent into eternal punishment.

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