Our name is very literal: Gospel Hope. We believe there is abundant hope in the Gospel.

But that begs the question, what is the Gospel?

Let’s start at the very beginning. When God created everything, He said it was good (Genesis 2).

Everything was in a perfect relationship with Him.

So what went wrong?

Unfortunately, it starts with us. From the very first humans up through now, we choose to live in a distorted reality. Instead of being content to be in a perfect relationship with God and worship Him, we all instead wanted to not only become God, but place things in our life above him (Genesis 3, Romans 1:21-23). And so we joined a spiritual rebellion already in progress— an attempted coup.

Through this spiritual rebellion, sin entered the world.

But what is sin? “Sin” simply means “missing the mark.” Humans missed the mark setup by God, namely choosing Him and His way. The Bible teaches that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) Every human— no exception.

In order to be “good" in God’s eyes, we must live without any sin from the day we were born. This is just impossible for any human. And not only that, but we have our past separation from God that has to be mended.

And because God is a good judge, He can’t let sin or rebellion go unpunished. A judge in court wouldn’t be just if he just swept a few things under the rug. So that puts us all in a very dangerous place: we risk the threat of being eternally seperated from and punished by God for our own rebellion against Him.

But thankfully God is not just a good judge, but also a loving father.

He created a way for us to return to a relationship with him and receive healing from the brokenness we caused.

The Bible says that “God demonstrated his own love for us in this: even while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) God closed this cosmic divide between humans and God by taking the punishment we deserved on himself. He did this by sending his son Jesus, who was at the same time fully God and fully human, and lived a perfect life, never having sinned even once, and he chose to take on all the punishment that we deserved. All the sin of humanity: past, present, and future for every person to ever exist was pilled onto Jesus who laid down his life willingly for us out of love. As he was crushed on the cross, he cried out “It is finished!” The cosmic separation between God and humans was finally at an end.

And in that moment of history, something indescribable happened.

All the punishment that we deserved for our sin was placed on Jesus, and all of His perfection was credited to us. And now when God looks at us, he doesn’t see our sin or rebellion anymore. He sees the perfection of His son.

But of course, none of this matters if Jesus stayed dead. If he was just a human like the rest of us, than all is lost. But we believe that Jesus proved He was God by rising to life after several days, proving there’s nothing more powerful than He. In predicting His own resurrection, Jesus said “because I live, you also will live.” (John 14:19) So now, we not only have a new clean life given to us by Jesus, but we also have incredible joy in knowing that our rescuer rose from the dead, and that we get to join Him in this resurrection.

“For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be rendered powerless so that we may no longer be enslaved to sin.” –Romans 6:6

This gift of new life is inclusive–

–meaning that it’s offered to every person on the planet, regardless of who you are, where you are, or what you’ve done.

But it’s also exclusive–

–meaning that it only applies to those who believe that God has done this. In order to receive this gift, we have to accept it.

Jesus made a bold claim during his time on Earth: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6) Jesus claimed that His way is not “one way of many paths up the mountain". Faith in Him is the exclusive way, the only way, to be reconciled with God. The Bible says “It will be credited to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.” (Romans 4:1)

The Bible outlines two things that we must do in order to receive this gift of new life and a restored relationship with God. These two things happen in tandem– one can not exist without the other.

The first is to believe.

To trust that Jesus took our punishment on himself and gave us his own perfection– that we deserve zero of– in the sight of God, and to believe that Jesus is the son of God, thus making it possible for this healing to happen. The Bible says “it is by grace you have been saved through faith— it is not your own doing— it is the work of God, so that no one may boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)

The second is to repent.

“Repent” is a word nowadays that carries a lot of negative baggage, but what it means is “to 180– to turn around". We must acknowledge that God’s way is right, and to “180 flip” any aspect of our lives that does not align with his original design. But we’re not alone in this— there’s incredible hope in knowing that as we believe in Jesus’s sacrifice in our place, He sends His Holy Spirit, who he calls “the advocate,” to help us accomplish what we could not do on our own. It begins the work of changing us from the inside out.

The death of Christ in our place, and his resurrection leads to so many truths. These are just a few among hundreds:

• We are justified (our wrongs have been resolved) by God.

• We are not defined by our wrongs anymore. We are resurrected and given a new life.

• We have been adopted by God into a family of believers.

• We have the opportunity to grow in a relationship with God, not tainted by our past anymore.

• We know that God provides and protects those he loves.

• We are aided by the Holy Spirit to live rightly.

• We have been given a purpose.

• We will be with God forever.

So come join us on Sunday! We meet to celebrate what God has done, and learn how we are invited into what He is doing.