There is only one true God who created the world and everything in it. That includes you. God wanted us to rule and take responsibility for the world under him. But instead we sinfully separated ourselves from him. Also, we have each sinned. What we have earned for ourselves is death, hell, and forever separation from experiencing God’s love and relationship with him.
God had other plans though. He stubbornly loves us and because of this God sent his Son Jesus to live a perfect life and die on a cross as a substitute for his people.
On the third day after his death, he rose bodily from the grave and now reigns in heaven. He offers to us forgiveness, righteousness, and eternal life. He calls us to turn away from ourselves and our sin and to turn toward him. He calls us to rely only on the work he has done for us and rest only in him. Our salvation is found in God through his Son Jesus, alone.
We are not only saved from our sin and ourselves but are also saved to something. We are blessed to be a blessing and we are saved in order to do good works (which had nothing to do with us actually being saved).
The best of the good things we do before we are saved are stained by sin. But when our good works are seen through the saving work of Jesus they become properly good. With this new ability to do truly good works we express thankfulness, strengthen the assurance of our faith, encourage brothers and sisters in Christ, adorn the profession of our faith, stop the mouths of those who oppose and misunderstand the Gospel, and we Glorify God.
“At the judgment, the law of God will justly declare us condemned. And the Gospel is that God the Son freely agreed to die our death for us, to suffer our deserved condemnation and doom in our place. And He didn’t just agree from eternity to do that. He actually did it. On the cross. For free! And for each one of us.”