“”The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”…..“Follow me,” Jesus told them, “and I will make you fish for people.”” Mark 1:15, 17 CSB https://bible.com/bible/1713/mrk.1.15-17.CSB

When God came to earth as one of us in Jesus, the Son of God, His message was simple: repent, believe, and follow. God’s ways are not ours, so we must turn away from our ways and follow God’s ways. We cannot continue in the same direction we were going when we encounter God in Jesus. We are born rebels against God and have consistently failed to obey Him. This we must acknowledge and discontinue. We do this because we believe that God has come in Jesus, that we have disobeyed Him, and that the consequence for such living is eternal condemnation from God at the judgment to come. We believe that God loves us and does not want to condemn humanity, so sacrificed Himself as a man for man’s disobedience so that all people could be reconciled to God. We believe that Jesus’ sacrifice and His perfect life make possible unmerited forgiveness by God for all we have done and eternal acceptance by Him as children of God, being both pardoned and declared acceptable to God because of the work of God in Jesus. So now we follow Jesus, doing what He did when He lived on earth. Not offering ourselves as a sacrifice for the disobedience of humanity but making known His sacrifice so that all people everywhere can also be pardoned by God who repents, believes, and begins to follow Jesus. Joining in the work of sharing this good news that God loves us and has made way for us to be reconciled to Him, that is not dependent upon our performance but is the work of God alone in Jesus alone, Who loves us and gave His life for us and is now risen from the dead to one day welcome us as His people who repented, believed, and followed His life on earth to live forever in heaven.