This post is written by David McLemore and is published as a companion to Unit 14, Session 2 of The Gospel Project for Adults Vol. 5 (Fall 2022): From Rebellion to Exile.

Here’s a very difficult truth I want to share with you: you deserve judgment from God. You are a sinner. You’ve done some terrible, awful, unimaginable things in your life. God’s wrath hangs over you because of those things. And, unfortunately, the news gets worse still. You can’t do anything to undo your bad deeds because it’s not just the bad things you did but the sinful person you are. It’s a heart problem, and you can’t fix a heart condition by yourself.

Now I’m not piling on you. I’m just as bad. Worse, probably. The sins of my life are so many that I can’t even count them. I know about a lot of them, but there are scores more that I’m not even aware of. Before the holy God above, I am nothing—less than nothing. I have no righteousness. I have no ground to stand on before God.

Good News

But God has good news for you and me. Though we deserve judgment from God, He has made a way of salvation for us. We deserve His wrath, but another took our place. Jesus came to live the life we never have, in perfect obedience to the Father. He died the death we were due, laying down His perfect life on the cross as our substitute. He rose again to bring new life to dead and dying people like you and me. Jesus is the answer to all our sin. He is our way back to God.

Maybe you know that already. That’s ok. We never outgrow it. The gospel never gets old. It never goes out of style. Because bad people are born every day, the gospel is the good news that remains fresh and vibrant and alive. Because sinners need a Savior, the gospel is the balm to anxious souls wondering if God can love them. Because the world is a broken place, the gospel is the light shining on a hill, with a crucified but risen King lifted up before a dying world, calling people to Himself.

A Gift to the Undeserving

The gospel is the story of God saying to His creation: “Come to me, and I will save you.” He doesn’t say that to perfect people. There aren’t any of those anyway. He doesn’t even say it to good people. There aren’t any of those either. He says it to people who have ruined their lives with their sin, who have turned from God and run the other way, who have taken the preciousness of their hearts and wounded them beyond repair. God’s offer is for the undeserving, and only the undeserving.

So, there is a difficult truth: you deserve judgment from God. But there is also a wonderful truth: God shows mercy and compassion to bad people like you and me. God saves sinners (1 Tim. 1:15), and as the great preacher Charles Spurgeon once said, there is no adjective between “saves” and “sinners.”[1] It’s not “put-together” sinners nor “cleaned-up” sinners nor “rehabilitated” sinners. Only sinners. That’s who God welcomes into His mercy and grace. The qualification for God’s salvation is as simple as being who we already are, as we turn to Christ Jesus knowing He is the sacrificial lamb who has taken our place. We come to Him in our sin and find in Him salvation.

David McLemore serves as an elder at Refuge Church in Franklin, Tennessee. He is a regular contributor to Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary’s For the Church website and a staff writer at Gospel-Centered Discipleship

[1] Charles Spurgeon, “The Whole Gospel in a Single Verse,” in Spurgeon’s Sermons, vol. 39: 1893, ccel.org/ccel/spurgeon/sermons39/sermons39.xii.html.