My gospel!
“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand.
Repent, and believe in the gospel.”
(Mark 1:15 – NKJV)
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“God has an awesome Kingdom, the greatest world imaginable, a world worth
giving up everything for (Matthew 13:44-46), an eternal world full of the best things
in life including a huge family, lots of great friends, the fullness of love, joy, and
peace, and no death, evil, or suffering of any kind (Romans 14:17, Revelation 21:
4). The best part of God’s Kingdom is God Himself; He is the most awesome being
you could ever imagine and He is the Kingdom’s star attraction, so much so that
everything is centred around Him (Revelation 21:3, Matthew 22:36-38). We human
beings however are unworthy of living in this kingdom because we are sinners,
which means we are all evil (Romans 3:23, Luke 11:13). Specifically we are people
who do things such as lie, commit immorality including sexual immorality, think and
act in perverted ways, worship gods who are not God, and commit violence
including kill. We truly are an unrighteous, evil people before God and are
completely unworthy of His presence and His righteous Kingdom. Consequently
God has rejected us and kicked us out of His Kingdom because evil is not allowed
there (Genesis 3, Isaiah 59:2, Matthew 13:41-42, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, Ephesians
5:5, 2 Peter 3:13, Revelation 21:27). In truth this should be the end of the story.
We should be kicked out and never allowed back in. The Bible calls this state of
existence death and hell, which foundationally is where you live for eternity and
never get to be with God and live in His Kingdom (2 Thessalonians 1:9, Revelation
20:14-15). This is the true penalty for committing evil in God’s world, even evil in
its smallest of forms (Genesis 3, Romans 6:23). Fortunately for us however God
loves us and doesn’t want us to spend eternity in hell so consequently He came up
with a plan to save us from it (Romans 5:8). This plan involved Him sending His
Son Jesus into the world to pay the penalty of our sin by dying for us (John 3:16).
It also involved Jesus rising from the dead so that we can be justified and declared
righteous by believing in Him (Romans 3:21-22, Romans 4:25-5:1). Because of
what Jesus did the way of salvation is very simple for us: all we have to do to be
saved and forgiven of our sins is believe in Jesus (John 3:16, Ephesians 2:8-9,
Acts 13:38-39). The bottomline to what this means is we need to believe in Him as
our Saviour who paid the penalty for our sin and we need to believe in Him as our
Lord and submit our lives to Him (Romans 10:9-10). The bottomline to what this
means is we need to repent (Matthew 4:17). Specifically we need to turn away from
living sinfully, including turning away from our lying, immorality, sexual immorality,
perversion, worship of other gods, and violence (1 Corinthians 6:9-10, Revelation
21:8, Matthew 4:10). Then we need to turn to Jesus and follow Him, which means
living according to His word and Spirit and ultimately according to love, doing good
for others and not doing bad, which is what all of His commands are based on
(Acts 20:20-21, Luke 9:23, John 8:31, Romans 8:14, Romans 13:8-10). If we do
this we will be judged by Jesus Himself to be people who believe in Him and we will
be saved from hell and given eternal life in His Kingdom (John 3:16, Matthew 25:
33-34). We will also be permitted to become a part of His Kingdom in a spiritual
sense right now while we live our lives in this world, complete with numerous
benefits that are meaningful to our lives today (John 1:12-13, 2 Peter 1:2-4),
including things such as healing, joy, and peace in our hearts, help for getting
through this life and all of its troubles, a huge family to be a part of, and a personal
relationship with God and Jesus through the Holy Spirit, which is what eternal life is
all about! (Luke 4:18, Romans 14:17, John 16:33, John 14:15-18, Matthew 12:47-
50, John 14:23, John 17:3). If we do not do this however we will remain outside of
God’s Kingdom and we will be condemned by Jesus Himself to spending eternity in
hell (John 3:36, Luke 13:3, Matthew 25:41).”