Marks of the Messenger

“We must speak about sin to be true to the message of the good news; after all, there is no good news if there was no bad news first. We want people to see their sin in all its horror, not so they are motivated to “clean up their act,” but so they fall at the feet of Jesus knowing that he is their only hope. People need to see the  depth of their sin so that they come to a fuller understanding of the depth of God’s grace.

We must press home two truths: our hopeless situation (“apart from me you can do nothing,” John 15:5) and
amazing grace (“he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy,” Titus 3:5).

After Jesus’ death by crucifixion, he was buried in a borrowed grave, and in three days he rose from dead.His new body bore scars from his crucifixion. The New Testament writers marked his bodily resurrection from the dead as a historical event, and they knew it to be the fulfillment of repeated biblical prophecies over thousands of years.

Today he demonstrates his great love and mercy by  reaching into our world, personally, with an offer of life- an offer to individuals to be set free from the bondage of sin and death. It’s the offer of life to the dying, those dying under God’s judgment, so that the One who would slay us laid down his life to set us free(Romans 5:9).

The Bible is filled with the language of this great offer: prisoners are set free, the lost are found, the blind see, the hungry feast, the dead are given life. This is an unique in a world awash with religions, both organized and fabricated. It’s not a matter of lineage or rules. In fact, it has nothing to do with any external action you perform. It’s a matter of heart.

So what is this offer of the good news?

The offer of the gospel is that our sins- in all their ugliness can be forgiven and that we can be adopted as God’s children with all the earthly privileges and heavenly inheritance of a child of God the Father, by simply turning from sin, especially our sin of unbelief, and placing our complete faith and trust in this Jesus.”

J. Mack Stiles, Marks of the Messenger: Knowing, Living and Speaking the Gospel