First, the Bad News

In order to explain what the good news of the gospel is and to answer to the question “Do I need it”, we need to examine some very bad news.When you were born, you were a beautiful and a precious person. That is good news. But you were also born with something very wrong with you. Everyone is born this way. We are not talking here about your health, your intelligence, your giftedness or anything else having to do with your body or your personality. We are talking about something very wrong with your spirit.The Bible tells us that we were created by God with three parts to us: a body, a soul and a spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:23).[1] The body doesn’t need to be explained. Your soul is that part of you that you tend to think of as “you” or “who you are” or “your personality”. It is that part of you where you think, feel, make decisions, dream and hope. Your spirit is the part of you that is like God, who is spirit (John 4:24).[2] God made people so He could have a relationship with them, so He could love them and live life together with them. And so part of us is like Him, and it is in our spirits that we can hear Him talk with us and know His love for us. The bad news is that we were all born with something terribly wrong with our spirits that keeps us from knowing His love and hearing His voice and, for some of us, it keeps us from believing He is there at all. That thing is called sin.
Some people think that sin is the bad things we do. Some think that it’s the things God doesn’t want us to do even though they’re fun, because He’s just a cosmic killjoy. Both these ways of understanding sin come from the same idea: God has some rules and, if we break them, that’s sin. But those things are not sin. They are sins. There isn’t too much difference in those words – just one letter. But there is a very big difference in meaning. Sins are the wrong things we do. Sin is why we do them. Sin is what is wrong in our spirit. Sin is what gives us the desire to do wrong things or that causes us to do wrong things we don’t even want to do.
Some people believe that they don’t sin or, if they do, they are still basically good people, and that’s good enough. God would be satisfied with their lives. But would He? When we say we are basically good despite a few shortcomings and failures and, yes, wrong things done, what we are saying is that the standard by which God judges our lives is whether our good outweighs our bad. But is that the standard? If you are a person with this belief, would you be surprised to know that God does not judge you by that standard? Then, what is His standard? His standard is perfection: 

“Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy” (Leviticus 19:2).

“But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do. Because it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy’” (1 Peter 1:15-16).

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). 

            Do you measure up to that standard? If not, then you have sin in your life, and it’s causing you to fall short. Romans 3:23 says that sin is about falling short of God’s glory: “[F]or all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”. Does your life measure up to the glory of God? If not, then you need to face the fact of sin in your life. (For more on the standard of God and what He has done about the fact that none of us can measure up to it, see Don’t All Religions Lead to God?)
The question that may be uppermost in your mind at this point is: “Then isn’t my life hopeless? God has a standard of perfection, and I have already fallen short. Is there no hope for me?” Be assured, there is great hope for you. It is called the gospel. However, before we move to the good news, let’s address another important question. If God made us, and He is the one who gave us our spirit, why is there sin in us? Did God put it there? No, God didn’t put it there. Then, where did it come from? That is the topic of the next portion of this study.       

Sharon Currens