This is the second in a series of blogs on The Good News as a part of the Armor of God.
What comes to your mind when you hear or think about the Good News? In the mid-1960s, Bill Bright stated the Four Spiritual Laws as a way to describe it. At the time he was the president of Campus Crusade for Christ. The following spiritual laws [1] have become a concise and well-known statement used by many to describe what God offers everyone and how we can accept it.
1) God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life (John 3:16; 10:10).
2) Man is sinful and separated from God. Therefore, he cannot know and experience God's love and plan for his life (Rom. 3:23; 6:23).
3) Jesus Christ is God's only provision for man's sin. Through him you can know and experience God's love and plan for your life (Rom. 5:8; 1 Cor. 15:3 - 6; John 14:6).
4) We must individually receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; then we can know and experience God's love and plan for our lives (John 1:12; 3:1 - 8; Eph. 2:8 - 9; Rev. 3:20).
As we contemplate the Good News, we should see that God is a loving Father. Ephesians 2:1-10 emphasizes this with an excellent description of God’s Good News for us. Our sin made us unacceptable before Him, and there is nothing we can do or say that will change this. We cannot be good enough, and there is no sacrifice we could offer that would absolve us. But God loved us anyway and He absolved our sin thorough the sacrifice of His Son. He wants to be our loving Father. Therefore, He saved us by His grace alone.
But more than saving us from our sin, the Good News is also about God instructing us to live the way He intended us to live. Proverbs 2 describes the role of a loving father providing instructions that he wants his child to follow. A very simple paraphrase of this chapter could be: Follow my instructions to earnestly pursue insight, wisdom and understanding. Then you will understand what it means to fear the Lord, and you will gain knowledge of God. Once you fear the Lord and gain knowledge of God, then you will understand what is right, just, and fair, and you will know how to find the right course of action every time. Therefore, follow the steps of good men, and stay on the paths of the righteous.
From this paraphrase we can see that God has a plan for us, He wants a relationship with us, He wants to guide us, He gives good examples to follow, and He wants us to share His love. This is Good News; shaken not stirred.
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All Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, Copyright 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
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