Good News and Bad News

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard kids tell their parents about something bad they did, but they start out with the good news to try to soften the blow. “Hey the car still runs!” It just needs a lot of body work, etc. The good news/bad news technique is a common preview in other areas as well. In some ways, it is used to soften the blow of the bad news, but in others the bad news makes the good news seem so much better. What is the good and bad news of Christianity?

The word Gospel literally means “good news”, the good news that Jesus died on the cross to save our sins, but the good news really isn’t that good without the bad news…

Romans 3:23-24 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus;

This is the Gospel in a nutshell. All of humanity is under the curse of sin from the day we are born, the curse incurred when Adam and Eve committed the first sin of disobedience millennia ago. That one act placed all of mankind under the wrath of our holy God, and they continued to fall further and further into sin and further away from the perfection God created. Through the course of history, mankind has sunk deeper and deeper into the pit of sin, rejecting the only Way out of it, destined for eternity in hell.

That’s the bad news.

Genesis 3:15 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her seed;
He shall bruise you on the head,
And you shall bruise him on the heel.

1 Peter 1:20 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.

The good news is that from the beginning of time, God had a plan of redemption. Even before He created the universe He knew that people would sin and be in need of redemption, so He made a way to do that. He planned from the beginning to send Jesus to earth to die for our sins, pay our debt, be the perfect sacrifice. He is the only Way of salvation, the only Way to God, the only Way out of our sin. We have to believe in and surrender our lives to Him in order to receive it, but we also have to believe the bad news.

Many people fall on two sides of the path of faith. Either they believe they are too bad to be saved, or they believe they have no sin. Both may claim to believe in Jesus and what He did, but without accepting His sacrifice for our sins and acknowledging our sinful state we cannot be saved. Without sin, there is no need for sacrifice. It is not enough to merely believe, we have to be changed by that belief. We have to submit ourselves to it, to Him. We have to have the bad news with the good. We cannot take half. We have to have the Old Testament with the New, the God of justice with the God of love. It’s all or nothing.

Philippians 1:27 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

Only conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or remain absent, I will hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel;

Have you accepted the good news of the Gospel? Have you acknowledged the bad news of sin? Will you submit yourself to those truths?