For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23)
This means that everyone has broken God's moral laws which prohibit things such as lying, stealing, adultery, coveting, murder, and so forth. Some people have broken the moral code less than others, but all who have violated it are guilty and are doomed to hell. No one matches up to what the Bible calls the 'glory of God', which is His moral perfection. This quality is necessary for entrance into Heaven. No matter how good one acts or how hard one tries, he can never rise to God's standard of absolute righteousness. Therefore, he is excluded from Heaven.
The second piece of bad news from God, revealed in the Bible, is that the penalty for sin is death. God says,
For the wages of sin is death. (Romans 6:23).
Because everyone has sinned, all have earned death, which is conscious suffering of eternal separation from God in hell. There is absolutely nothing a person can do to remove this divine penalty of death.
The Bible, however, contains some very good news from God to morally guilty sinners. First, the Bible says that Jesus Christ died in the sinner's place.
But God demonstrates His own love towards us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).
Since we as guilty sinners could do nothing to pay for our moral guilt, God Himself paid the penalty of death for us through the sacrifice of His Son, the sinless God-man Jesus Christ. This sacrifice completely satisfied God's justice, which demands the punishment of death for our sins. It is as if a healthy person took into his body the terminal disease of another so that the sick person would live, while the healthy person died in his place. In the same way, the sinless Jesus Christ took on Himself our cancer of sin and suffered death on the cross as our substitute. He died in our place. After paying the penalty of death for our sins, Jesus Christ arose from the dead because He had no moral guilt of His own. Since God's justice against us was satisfied, death could no longer hold Jesus in the tomb. Now, that's good news!
The second piece of good news from God in the Bible is that everyone can now receive eternal life in Heaven as a gift from God by trusting in Jesus Christ as one's personal savior. The Bible says,
For by grace are you saved through faith; and that not of yourselves; it is a gift of God; not as a result of works, that no man should boast (Ephesians 2:8-9).
Salvation comes only through faith in Jesus Christ.
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life (John 3:16).
All human sin has been paid for by God's Son, Jesus Christ, on the cross. Because of this, God the Father can give eternal life in Heaven as a no-strings-attached, free gift to anyone who will receive it by faith in His Son. Faith means to trust in Jesus Christ alone to save one from hell. Faith means to believe what God has said about being received into Heaven through His Son, Jesus Christ, who has paid for all our sins.
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