How The Gospel Meets Our Greatest NeedsPrøve

Salvation and Redemption Stories Have Sad Beginnings One of the necessary threads that connect all stories of salvation and redemption is a sad beginning or, at least, a sad middle. The thrill only work when the character needs to be saved or redeemed from something, and the more impossible it seems for the character, the sweeter the salvation is. The Gospel reveals just how badly we need salvation. While it offers us the cure, without a clear understanding of our sickness, we won’t take it. With that being said, I have some bad news: We have all been sentenced to death. God created a perfect world, and in this world, he created two people, Adam and Eve, in His own image. For a while, everything was right in the world. In God’s words, it was “very good.” Adam and Eve lived in harmony with God and lived as perfect images of Him. But then sin entered the story. This sin was not and is not just choosing bad things instead of good ones; it is a condition within all of humanity that leads to death and life without God. Sin fractured the perfect creation. Because of it, people can no longer live in their proper design as image bearers. We live today as fractured images, longing to be made whole but unable to fix ourselves. The scriptures today demonstrate this bad news. They are not uplifting or encouraging, but don’t forget the verses from yesterday while you read todays. Keep in mind that we are looking at a redemption story, and this is just the early stages. Tomorrow we will begin looking at how Jesus saves us, but in order for that news to be sweet, we need to taste the bitterness of our sin. We need to see the sad beginning in order to appreciate the redemptive end.