We’ve Got Good News!

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“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’” (Romans 1:16-17)

When the news media tries to scoop its competition it basically wants a story that nobody else has. If they get the scoop they can underscore their namesake with the claim that what they are publishing is new. Nobody wants to read or see olds. Everyone wants to know the news.
So when we talk about the Good News of Christ it might seem like we should call it the Good Olds. After all it has been around for a couple thousand years and nothing has been added to it. For those of us who are familiar with the gospel (good news) of Christ, it is in fact old news. However, for perhaps the majority of people alive today it still would be considered news.

There are a couple of reasons for this. First, people simply haven’t heard it or read it. Reach Beyond, a global missions agency, says that over 2 billion people have never heard the gospel message. The Joshua Project, a missions information ministry, says that “81% of all Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists do not know a Christian.” For those of us who follow Christ, we must come to grips with this harsh reality and ask the Lord what He wants us to do about it.

The second reason is that people have not heard the real gospel message. They've heard a "gospel" which is based on human righteousness instead of God's righteousness. It really is as simple as that. Either we know the righteousness that God has revealed in the Bible that comes through faith in Jesus, or we know a human righteousness which is based on what we have done.

There are many variations of human righteousness. Some of it is based on the number of good things we have done versus how many bad things we have done. Some of it is based on how well we can pray and ask God or angels or dead relatives to save us from our fate. Some of it is based on whether we achieve a state of oneness with a higher ideal. Some of it is based on whether we have killed in the name of God. Whatever the variation, it all comes back to human ability.

Most of the people in our lives who don’t know the good news are going to fit into this category. They think that human ability is going to cut it. It is up to us to help them to clearly see the righteousness of God. When I say it is up to us I mean that God has asked us to share the good news with the people He puts in our lives. As long as they think that they can be righteous by their own ability, they will never understand the gospel.

It takes courage to share the gospel. I understand that perfectly well. But let me leave you with two thoughts to spur you on as you and the Lord come to an understanding about talking to others about His good news. First, stop looking back at the past and follow in the Lord’s footsteps today. Don’t let your past be an excuse from growing into the future that the Lord has for you. Second, exercise that faith that God says you live by and just trust that He will show you who to talk to, how to talk to them, what to say and when to say it. 

 Hey, we’ve got really good news! Let’s tell somebody about it!
Devoted to keeping Jesus Christ the main thing.

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