These two verses tell us the incredible Good News of what God has done for us and why He did it. We get four big truths that help us understand what it means to be a Christian and how it impacts your life.

These four truths will be our outline for the rest of this course. Let’s look at the first one.

As a new Christian, the first thing you need to grasp is the love of God. He created everything, including you, because he loved you and wanted a relationship with you. Being a Christian is not a religion it’s a relationship with a living God.

He loved you even when you didn’t love him & pursued you even when you weren’t looking for him. God is not an impersonal partial force but a powerful, personal, loving God who desires friendship with you. Think of the friendships you’ve had in your life – there is a natural desire to spend time with one another and talk to one another. Do you know that you can talk and spend time with God? This is what we call “prayer”.

Try talking to God like you would speak with someone you trust. Don’t worry about whether or not He likes your choice of words. He loves to spend time with you. Maybe praying to him for the first time can feel a bit overwhelming – here is a prayer you can repeat either out loud or in your heart.

God, thank you for loving me even before I began loving you. Thank you for pursuing me and revealing how much you love me through your Son. Thank you for saving me and bringing me into a relationship with you. Amen.

This is Patrick; he became a Christian after years of feeling like God did not love him. When he heard that God has demonstrated his love for him by sending his Son to die for him, he said it felt like, “Scales fell off my eyes” and because he now understood God’s love, he felt he had “purpose and worth.” 

John 3:16 – 17 explains that God sent his Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to save the world. But save the world from what? This is a great question to ask & it helps you to understand what happened to you when you decided to follow Christ.

If we look around the world, we can easily see that there is something drastically wrong. Wars, disease, crime, corruption and evil are on almost every headline we read. However, this was never God’s intention for his creation. When he created everything, it was pure, righteous and good. However, sin entered the world through Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:14 – 19), and like an ocean oil spill, it tainted all of creation, and we experience its consequences daily. God’s plan is to one day eradicate all sin and evil in creation and set the world right again. This is great news until you realise that we, too, are sinful and deserving of death.

All of humankind through the ages have tried to deal with sin, either by embracing it, redefining it, ignoring it or trying to make up for it by doing many good things, hoping that God will see all their good deeds and be pleased with them. But God is so holy and righteous that no matter how many good deeds we do, whether it’s going to church, following all the commandments or doing good things for people, it all ends up falling far short of his standard. We are in desperate need of a Saviour. We are in desperate need of forgiveness. However, forgiveness requires a cost.

Consider this example from Grant in the video below describing how forgiveness and sacrifice work together

The Bible talks about the story of humankind similarly in that since sin entered the world, we need forgiveness; however, forgiveness requires sacrifice. We need a Saviour who will reunite us with God; this diagram shows that all our attempts to reconcile with God are hopeless.

God loved us so much that he sent his Son, Jesus, to be our Saviour. Becoming a Christian is recognition that Jesus has saved us from our sins by dying on the cross and reuniting us back to God. He forgave us, and it cost him His Son. Paul, one of the writers of the New Testament puts it like this:

If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself- 2 Corinthians. 5:17-18

This is such good news! When you become a Christian, you become a “new creation”, your sin has been dealt with, and you have been reconciled back to God. How did Jesus deal with our sins? Paul goes on to explain:

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. – 2 Corinthians. 5:21

John 3:16 – 17 also reveals that those who believe in Jesus will not perish but have everlasting life. But what is eternal life? First, it means that we do not have to fear death since we know that we will be with the one who has loved and saved us. We are no longer citizens of this earth, but we are citizens of heaven.

But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Saviour. 21 He will take our weak mortal bodies and change them into glorious bodies like his own, using the same power with which he will bring everything under his control. – Philippians 3:20

If you were to take a flight and travel across the world to another country, you would soon recognize the obvious changes. These changes may include the president, the language spoken, the accent, the culture, values and customs. The moment you decide to follow Jesus, the Scriptures describe you as being transferred to a different kingdom.

For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves – Colossians 1:13

Now that we have explored what it means to be a Christian, we can continue our journey of what it means to follow Jesus. The Scriptures tell us that we are his masterpiece and he has rescued us for a particular plan and purpose.

God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. 9 Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. 10 For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago – Ephesians 2:8 – 10