The Message of Jesus: Good News for Today: Salvation!
The gospel is good news for the future: we will live forever with Jesus. The Bible concludes with good news in the book of Revelation:
I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them and be their God;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away. (Rev. 21:2-4)
The good news is that God wants to live with us. That is why he created us, that is why he sent Jesus to save us from our wrong-headed ways. There will be no more death, no more sin, no more regrets. Joy will fill the earth as we live in the way that the Father, Son and Spirit do: with nothing but love for one another.
Jesus makes it possible. The Father and the Spirit are also essential, but Jesus is the one who reveals God’s love and God’s ways most clearly.
The most surprising revelation that Jesus brought is that God loves us so much, cares for us so much, wants to live with us so much, that he was willing to become one of us, willing even to die for our salvation. He is not the god of thunderbolts, not a god who likes to punish. Rather, he is a God who wants to save.
Paul describes Jesus’ work as a message of peace: “He came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near, for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father” (Ephesians 2:17-18). Reconciliation means peace – God is not angry at us.
When Jesus returns, he will bring worldwide peace, and “whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise.”[1] It is a picture of beauty and glory – supremely good – good news of a highly desirable future.
It will be so good that the sorrows of this life will seem like small things (Romans 8:18); it will be so good that even the best things of this life will seem like merely teasers of far better things to come.
It is a wonderful future, and any message that points people toward this is good news. The reward is so large, that there is no sacrifice too great. Do the math – we give up some temporary pleasures, and we gain an infinite amount of joy. There is no comparison. “In your presence there is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).
We should let nothing – not even humiliation and death – cause us to abandon our love and loyalty for Christ. He who died for us, shall we not live for him? (2 Corinthians 5:15). He who is so faithful to us, should we not be faithful to him? We give up a tarnished world of struggle and pain, and we gain a glorious life of never-ending joy and love.
Good news right now
That’s wonderful news about the future, you might think. But what about life right now? When Jesus preached that the kingdom was near, it was good news, right then and there, even for poor people in a land ruled by Roman armies.
Jesus did not promise them health and wealth; he did not promise that they would never be hungry or sick. Instead, he promised difficulties: “If they persecuted me, they will persecute you” (John 15:20). “It is through many persecutions that we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22).
So how is this good news?
- We will have problems in this world whether or not we believe in Jesus. Life is hard, and then we die. If we are lucky enough to be rich, life is not quite so hard, but we still die. The gospel gives us the good news that death is not the end of it all – it is an enemy that has been conquered by Christ, and he gives us the victory over it. Life is good. We will live again in a far better world, and it’s good for us to know that.
- We know that we are loved – not for what we do (even our best actions are trivial in comparison to what God does) but simply because God chooses to love us. Jesus created us even when he knew in advance that we would rebel against him, even when he knew in advance that he would have to die for us. He did it because he loves us, and nothing can change that.
- We have peace with God. Because of what Christ has done for us, we have no fear regarding our eternal future. We are on God’s good side, so to speak. (We were all along, but it’s good to find it out now.)
- We have peace with ourselves. We know we have done wrong things; we have failed to live up to what we know is right. We know that love is good and love is faithful, and yet we know that we haven’t always chosen the right thing. Jesus says our belief about love is right – love is not just an obligation built into our DNA to help the survival of the species. Love is good, objectively and eternally.
When we fail to love, we are not just failing our own standards, we are violating eternal and universal standards. But the good news is that the Creator of it all has the authority to forgive us of everything we have ever done wrong. Our conscience is cleared, and we can go forward with Christ. We will still fail, but we have good news that failure does not have the last word. It’s already been taken care of, by Jesus, as a gift to us.
- We have meaning and purpose in life. We didn’t just get thrown into the world by chance, as the result of random mutations of a life that began by accident on a planet that will eventually grow cold and lifeless.
If this life is all there is, there’s little reason for us to love, to be loyal to anyone except ourselves. Good behavior will not be rewarded, and bad behavior will not be punished – we can do whatever we want, because none of it matters in the end. Nothing is good, and nothing is evil. But with Jesus, we have reason to do right, even when we are tempted to do something selfishly.
- We do not walk alone. This is true in more than one way. First, we are not left to ourselves to figure out what life is for and how we should live. Many of us have tried that and found that it doesn’t work. We need the help of someone who knows more about life than we do – we need guidance from the creator of life, who has been around a lot longer than we have. He knows that love is the best path. Jesus chose the way of love even when it cost him his life, because he knew that God, in love, will give us life again.
- Another way that we do not live alone is that God puts us in community, in relationship with other believers. We admit that there are many problems in the church, because we each bring our problems with us. People in the church will test our patience, will sin against us, will disappoint us. Some churches are even toxic, distorting our view of Christ. None of them are perfect, but we are better off in a community than on our own. We encourage one another, learn from one another, work with one another, and learn to love with one another. Through the joys, frustrations and the work, God works in us to prepare us for better things to come.
- A third way that we are not alone is that God is with us. God the Father is for us, God the Son became human to be with us, and now God the Spirit is living and active within us. He does not give us pat answers to our questions; he is not a crystal ball that tells us when to buy and when to sell. He works “under the radar” to help us understand, to convict us of the right way, to encourage us in the faith. He will help us see the beauty of eternal life with Christ, the beauty of a life lived in love even when it’s difficult, the beauty of life itself – a life that we want to last forever. The Holy Spirit is part of the good news for life right now.
Endnote
[1] Here we are borrowing the words of Paul in Philippians 4:8. Paul was not talking about the return of Christ specifically, but we are obeying Paul’s command here in applying these words to our wonderful future with Christ and with one another.
Author: Michael Morrison, 2025