What is the Bible about? What story is at the core of Christianity? To Pastor David Platt, the whole Bible points to Jesus, who reconciles humanity to God through his perfect life, death, and resurrection. Pastor Platt explains that humans are separated from God by their sins. Confronted with this reality, humans must choose whether they will trust in Jesus or themselves to be saved from their sin. When we trust in Jesus, we can be made right with God, find forgiveness of sin, and have assurance of eternal life. Finally, this good news should overflow to a world in need of God.
- The Fall of Humanity
- Jesus Dying in Our Place
- Our Response
- Telling Others
The Story of the Bible
This is the story of the Bible in a nutshell, summarized in 60 seconds. You and I, we’ve all sinned against God. We’ve all turned aside from God’s ways to our own ways, and we are separated from God. And if we die in this state of separation from God, we will spend eternity separated from God. But the good news of the Bible is that God has not left us alone, separated from him. God has come to us.
He’s not just sent this messenger or that prophet, a king, God has come himself in the person of Jesus. And he has done what no other leader, no other person, no other king, no other anybody could ever do, or will ever do. Jesus has lived a perfect life with no sin. And then, even though he had no sin to pay any price for, he had no sin to die for, Jesus chose to die in order to pay the price for your sin and my sin.
The Story of Jesus in the Bible
Jesus died on a cross to pay the price for our sin. And then the good news keeps getting better because he didn’t stay dead for long. Jesus rose from the dead in victory over sin, so that all who trust in him can be saved from all their sin.
This, then, is the ultimate question I would ask every single person within the sound of my voice right now, because your eternity hinges on how you answer this question: will you, in your life, trust in Jesus to save you from your sin; or will you, in your life, turn from Jesus and trust in yourself? The answer to that question determines your eternal destiny, and I want to urge you to trust in Jesus to save you from your sin, to believe that God loves you so much that he has come to save you from your sin.
I invite you, today, right where you’re sitting right now, you can trust in Jesus and be saved, forgiven of all your sin, reconciled back into relationship with God. And then the beauty is, when you do that because you realize God himself has come to us, then it only makes sense in a world of sin and suffering, follow this: we go to others. This is what we do as the overflow of the good news of God coming to us, we ourselves go to others to share this gospel. We don’t wait for people to come to us to find out the greatest news in the world, we go to them.
We go to coworkers around us that we work in the office with, we go to neighbors around us, we go to people in the city right around us, and people around the world, and we tell them the greatest news in the world: God has not left us alone in a world of sin and suffering, God has come to us to make a way for us to be saved from our sin and to have eternal life with him. We go into a world to share this gospel and to show God’s love, and it only makes sense for those who’ve received this kind of love from God to go into a world of need and show this kind of love.
Show God’s Love
So put it together with what is happening here in Ethiopia. You have an orphan crisis, 5 million orphans. How will they know that God loves them, that God is the Father to the fatherless if we don’t go to them? This is what we do. Of course, we give our lives. And not just here in Ethiopia, right around us. This is why we are serious about foster care in our church, we’re serious about adoption. We’re serious about loving vulnerable children right around us, and not just children but people in need. We are drawn to people in need. We go out living and leaping for the glory of God because we want them to know the good news of the God who doesn’t wait for us to come to him, but the God who comes to us.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
