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THE STORY OF GOD

A Summary of the Kingdom Gospel

Tim Carpenter – InterVarsity Christian Fellowship

The University of New Hampshire

daxhiker44@hotmail.com

DRAFT October 2006

REFLECTION AND PURPOSE

As a staff member with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, I am
committed to sharing the hope of Christ with any student, faculty, or staff
on my campus who is interested or willing to listen. But often, I have
found myself perplexed by some of the theological details of what it means
to share “The Gospel”. How much does a non-Christian need to know in order
that he or she might come to a saving knowledge of Christ? This “Story of
God” is an attempt at refining the core truths of the Gospel into a form
that is clear and concise. As with all of us on this side of Heaven, I am
growing in my understanding of God, and my views are (hopefully) more and
more honed to the truth of His Word through the guidance of the Holy
Spirit. Thus, this writing is a work in progress. My hope is that this draft of the Story of God will be useful to you
in sharing with non-Christians and in teaching Christians the foundational
truths of the Gospel. I have used this as a hand-out in evangelism
training as I’ve led students to “major in the majors” of evangelism and
not to become overwhelmed with the details that often confuse non-
Christians more than help them. As an apologist at heart, I value the deep
discussion that helps to clear away the brush that keeps non-believers from
having a clear view of the Cross of Christ. But when all the brush is
cleared, we do indeed have to know how to share the foundations of the
Story of God with them. May this handout be used for that purpose and for
His glory.

(NOTE: I have left out Scriptural references from this paper, but will work
on another version that will contain the appropriate biblical references.
Depending on one’s audience, referring to the actual chapter and verse of a
passage may be more or less helpful.)

1.) GOD CREATED THE UNIVERSE. God is the all-powerful, infinite, all-good,
perfect, holy (meaning “totally ‘other’”), and all-loving King of the
universe. He existed before anything else did and He has always been.
This awesome King God created the universe and all that is in it, including
this very planet. As He created these many things, He saw how good they
were, and He then decided to create human beings in His own image. When He
created humans, He made them as both physical and spiritual beings to be in
a relationship with Him, with one another, and with the created world (the
Creation), and He created them to live a life of love, peace, and
fulfillment for all eternity. To make sure humanity was safe and complete,
God set up some guidelines that would help to keep humanity in these right
relationships. His intention was to have humans help reign over all of His
Kingdom and to take care of it with Him.

2.) HUMANS REBEL AGAINST GOD. Humanity, even though they were blessed and
given so many amazing gifts from God, decided that there was more to be
acquired and that the only way it could do this was to become like God.
Humans rejected the guidelines of God, essentially calling God a liar and
telling Him that they wanted to live life outside of His purposes – they
wanted to be their own kings, their own gods. When this happened, the
world became a broken place. This brokenness created a gap between God and
humans, as well as between humans and other humans, within individual human
beings themselves, and with the Creation. While this brokenness showed
itself in outward expressions, the real issue was that inside the very
heart and soul of humans, a disease had sprung up, and the Bible calls this
disease sin. The problem was that no matter how much humans tried to fix
the disease, it could not be cured and eventually, this disease of sin
causes all living things to die both a spiritual and physical death.

3.) GOD’S CONTINUED LOVE. Humans rejected God’s purposes and plans for
them, and God, as the perfect and righteous Creator of all things, had
every right to say, “You know what – forget it. I am going to wipe this
whole universe out and start over.” The strange thing is.God didn’t do
that. He looked down and saw that the people He had created were beautiful
in His eyes, and so He began to enact a plan to make them right again – right with Him, with one another, within themselves, and with Creation – and in bringing this healing, He would begin to restore the Kingdom He had
intended in the beginning of all things. He knew that people were too
broken and misled to be able to find their way back to Him. So He sent His
Son, Jesus, into the world to be a shepherd to guide the lost people of the
world back to God. But how would He do this?

4.) JESUS AND THE CROSS. Jesus was sent to the earth to show people how to
be made right in their relationships. He lived a perfect life and showed
how to be a person of love and of truth who lived in and for the Kingdom of
God. But a bigger problem remained: human beings were filled with this
disease of sin and they could not be right until that sin was cured. So
Jesus took all the sin and brokenness of the world and put it on His own
shoulders. That brokenness was put on Him and it had to be put to death.
To make this happen, Jesus was crucified and with Him, God put to death all
the sin (past, present, and future) of the world. When Jesus His Son was
killed, the greatest power of sin – death – was killed as well. And to
show that God had power to conquer even the greatest result of sin, He
raised Jesus from the dead after 3 days.

5.) INVITATION INTO THE KINGDOM LIFE OF GOD. So as you can see, God loves
the world, so much that He gave His own Son as a way to be freed from the
daily and eternal impacts of sin. And since humans couldn’t work their way
to Heaven, God asks that we do three things to be made right with Him:

1.) He asks that we admit we are broken – in ourselves, in our
relationship with Him, in our relationship with one another, and in our
relationship with the created world. 2.) He asks that we accept the free gift of His forgiveness that
comes through the death and resurrection of Jesus. We are called to
accept this as grace (being given something good that we don’t deserve) and
realize that we cannot work our way into a “good place” with Him, or work our
way into Heaven. 3.) In doing this, we are invited to become members of God’s Kingdom purposes here on Earth. We join His communities (being with
other Christ- followers) through which we serve and proclaim
His story, and ultimately, we are given the gift of eternal life and peace after we die, when we
go to Heaven and spend eternity with God. 6.) THE COST. But God is a jealous God. He created you to be in a
right relationship with Him and He knows how to lead you in the best ways
possible. So He doesn’t want just to hear that you believe, He wants to
see that you believe in Him and His plans. So He asks that you follow Him
and Him alone, that you give your life over to Him to pursue His ways. If
we do this, He promises to bless us in amazing ways – not necessarily in
the earthly sense of “blessing” – but He promises to lead us on an amazing
adventure of bringing His Kingdom purposes about here on Earth. God
invites us into living for something much bigger than ourselves.

7.) THE ETERNAL REALITY. God tells us that eventually time as we know it
will end.

He will close the chapter on this piece of history known as our world.
When that Day comes, He will serve as the judge of the world and will
decide if people are in right relationship with Him. How will He do this?
He will look to see if each individual accepted the free gift of
forgiveness that came in Jesus’ death and resurrection. For those who did
accept Jesus’ gracious gift and follow after Him, Heaven will be the
eternal reward. In Heaven, all those who are saved by this grace will be
together in joyous celebration with God and will follow Him and be blessed
by Him forever. On the other side, those who have not accepted the free
gift of forgiveness from God will be sent away from God, Heaven, and all
that is good, and sent to Hell. While many people discuss and argue what
Hell is like (Is it really fire? Will it really last forever?), God is a
righteous and perfect Judge, and anyone who is not made right with God
through the sacrifice of Jesus will be sent away from Him for all eternity.

Jesus spoke boldly and frequently about the reality of Hell and taught
that it was reserved as a punishment for those who reject God. Eternity
hangs on how we respond to the Story of God.