God’s Will: Faith: the Gospel
I have reiterated the absolute need for us to believe God, to trust Him. That God’s will for you is faith, that all your circumstances are to glorify God by faith, even in suffering. I have called you to believe. But what is it exactly that I am calling you to trust? I have said it is the gospel. I have said have faith in God. I have said trust Jesus. I have also said repent and believe, repentance and faith being inseparable, yet two distinct things. I want to just unpack the gospel for you, so that you can believe.

The Gospel is first and foremost news, and not just news but good news. What does that mean? It means that the gospel is an announcement, a proclamation and that what it is announcing and proclaiming is good. What is the news that is announced in the gospel? It is the news that God has sent His Son Jesus Christ as a sacrifice for sins. Why is that good? It is good because our sin separates us from God, creating enmity between us and God, and rightfully bringing God’s wrath upon us. The good news announces that Jesus has done, once and for all, what we could never do, restore us and reconcile us to God. How was this done? Jesus, being God, came in the flesh of man, and lived a perfect life in our place, fulfilling every commandment and all righteousness, in our place. He lived the life we all should have lived but due to sin can never live, and He did it in our place. The perfect for the imperfect, even wicked. He then suffered and died upon a cross for our sin. Why did He have to die for our sin? The wages of sin are death, without the shedding of blood there can be no remission of sins. He shed His blood, died, in our place. The righteousness and justice and wrath that God demanded as a perfect God were satisfied in Jesus’ life and death, in our place. Jesus took the wrath of God that we deserve and suffered and died in our place. The perfect for the imperfect, even wicked. To show that God was satisfied with the offering of Christ’s life and death, He rose Him from the dead, exalting Him forever at the right hand of God. Jesus is alive.

The gospel announces the finished work of Jesus on our behalf, the good news that Jesus has done what we could never do. The gospel announces the good news not as something that we can believe but as the one thing that we must believe in order to be saved, for no other way to salvation has God appointed. To believe the gospel is to believe God, and to reject the gospel is to reject God. God calls us to faith but that faith must be in the good news of Jesus Christ. There is no way to God, or peace and reconciliation with God except by faith in the gospel, this being the way God has appointed to save His people. Faith in the gospel is simply trusting the work of God in Jesus Christ on your behalf, it is believing God. Faith receives the good news as it is, namely true. Faith looks to Jesus and nothing else for right standing before and with God.

When I say that God’s will for your life is faith and that everything you experience is to bring you to faith, you must understand that what I mean is faith in the good news of Jesus Christ as a sacrifice for sin, even your sin. Believe and be saved.