The Best News Ever

• But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it–the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.  For there is no distinction:  For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, who god put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.  This was to show God’s righteousness, because in her divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.  It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.  Romans 3:21-26 
• Before God, we are not righteous.  We can do everything in our power to try to appease him, and we cannot.  He is holy and righteous and just.  All through the Jewish religious system, there was a sacrifice made each year for sins. The 10 commandments and the law given for the Jews to be righteous before God showed the reality that there is no one who is worthy or good before him.  It showed the impossibility of getting to God.  
• The penalty of our sin before God brought physical death on the earth (we were created to live forever), but even more so, it brought eternal seperation from God in hell.  This punishment is just because God, as a righteous judge, cannot look on us in our sin…he cannot count as a righteous in order to be in relationship with him when we are not, in fact, righteous.   He would cease to be who he is if he were not true to who he is.  See Romans 1-3.
• Jesus Christ, the only sinless man and also God made flesh on earth, was the ultimate, eternal sacrifice.   He willingly was obedient to suffer and  to die as a sacrifice for the sins of all who would repent and believe.  God is a God of love, mercy, justice, wrath, compassion, long-suffering, and most of all, holiness.  He graciously made a way, in Christ, for us to know, love and experience Him.  
• Our hearts are made whole when we repent of our dead sinful live and are awakened to His Spirit’s presence within us making us new.  We are then able to follow him and love him and walk in the way he wants us to walk.  It is a process.  We learn to die to our old ways and live to his ways.  It is a joy to live this way walking in his power and grace.
• Romans 10:9  “If you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
• Ephesians 2:1-9   “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience–among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath (God’s wrath), like the rest of mankind.  But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ–by grace you have been saved– and raised us up in the heavenly places with Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.  For by grace you have been saved by faith.  and this is not your own doing;  it is the gift of God, not a result of works so that no one may boast.” 
• Therefore, the worst news in the world, that we are sinners with no hope before God is met and provided by him to bring the best news in the world…he made a way for us through Jesus Christ.  
• There are many who claim the name Christian as an adjective in their life.  Being “conservative” or going to church or living a “moral, family values” life does not make you a Christian.  Only those who put their faith in Christ and Christ alone will be with God eternally.  Only those who walk in Him.  Matthew 7 says that there will be many in the end, when Jesus judges the world, who will act like and assume that they know him but he will say depart from me.  
• Basically, in a relationship with Christ, we are given the Holy Spirit, who enables us to walk in the things of Christ.  He grows us slowly and sometimes painfully but very faithfully to bear fruit and depend on Him.  That fruit is what shows us to be his disciples.  That fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control–all the things we do not have on our own apart from him.  Those things, over time, grow in a Christian’s life and they bring glory to God because they show how good and glorious he is in us.