Mark’s Gospel – one of the four historical accounts of Jesus’ life and death that we find in the Bible – opens this way: “The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God.” (Mark 1:1)

We believe at Westgate Chapel that Christianity is good news. It’s not the sort of good news like Ipswich Town Football club winning the Championship, or the good news when a baby is born healthy and happy. The gospel of Jesus Christ is far greater, it’s the greatest news the world has ever heard. The most brilliant, awe-inspiring, hopeful news in the cosmos is that two thousand years ago, Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God came into the world.

Why did Jesus come into the world? Jesus came to save people from their sins.

The greatest problem with our world is not climate change, it’s not the super-rich getting richer, it’s not the crime and injustice we see on our streets. As serious as they are, they’re symptoms of our greatest problem: our own sinful, selfish hearts.

Jesus says that it is out of our human hearts that evil comes from, “sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these thoughts come from inside a person.”

Two thousand years ago, at that first Christmas, Jesus came into the world as a baby – he was both fully God and fully man – and he came on a mission to save. Jesus lived an amazing life, teaching all who would listen what it meant to live in God’s kingdom, healing the sick, raising the dead to life, giving sight to the blind. But the ultimate point of his life, was to die. Not because he deserved to die, but because he was coming to give his life for us, to take the punishment that our selfish sins deserve.

Three days after his death, Jesus rose from the dead to life again just as he predicted he would, and in a single stroke proving the truthfulness of all that he died for.

Today, anyone can come to God and ask for forgiveness because of Jesus’ death in their place on the cross and God will welcome them into his family forever. Becoming a Christian, means that we become God’s children; that we can pray to our Father in Heaven and know that he’ll hear our prayers; that we have a promise of eternal life with God forever.

That we believe is the most amazing news in the world: that undeserving, guilty people like us, can at the cost of God’s Son, be adopted into God’s family, receive eternal life and forgiveness, and know their creator forever.

That’s the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God!

We’d love you to join us to find out more.