Gospel
There are three big words that are central to our existence at Seven Mile Road. They are the who, the what, and the why about us. Everything about our church seeks to be informed and shaped by gospel, mission, and community.
GOSPEL
It
all begins with the gospel. The gospel is literally "good news." So
first, the bad news is that in our sin, we have rebelled against a Holy
God who made us to enjoy all things and to enjoy Him. Our sin has
corrupted everything. Our world, our relationships, our bodies, and our
connection with God have all been fractured. We find ourselves enemies
of the One we were made to enjoy and alienated from Him. But there's good
news! In His great love, and mercy, and grace, God has made a way to
reconcile us to Himself and to redeem all things. Jesus came into the
world and lived the life we were supposed to live and died the death we
deserved to die. Though He was innocent and sinless and pure, on the
cross, Jesus took upon Himself the judgment that we deserved. But on
the third day, Jesus rose again triumphant and defeated the power of
sin and death. Through His death and resurrection, Jesus takes our
place, pardons our sins, offers us eternal life, and restores our
relationship with God and with another. And now through the power of
this incredible gospel, God has promised to make all things new and to
restore us and our world to the way it was made to be.
This is
the gospel and it is the good news available to all who would believe.
We can finally stop pretending like we're perfect and admit that we are
deeply flawed. We can finally stop trying to get to God and marvel at
what He did to get to us. By faith, trusting in God and not ourselves,
we can receive the unmerited, unconditional, and unearned love of God
as a free gift through Jesus Christ.
At Seven Mile Road, we're
trying to be centered upon the gospel. We're trying to remember that we
don't start with the gospel and then move onto something else. Everyday
we're more aware of how truly imperfect and sinful we are. But everyday
we're even more aware of how much God loves us and how truly He has
accepted us in Christ. So our hope is to never move beyond the gospel,
but to grow in our experience of it everyday.
Someone once said
that you can describe the sweetness of honey, but you can't know how
good it is until you taste it. We invite you to join us in tasting the
goodness of God through His gospel.
