THE GOSPEL
We encourage all who attend SWHCC to look for opportunities to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with gentleness and respect (1 Peter 3:15-16) as they go through their daily life.
We believe the Gospel to be that God is the creator and owner of everything and loving ruler of the all we see. He also created mankind and gave us the responsibility and power to rule over and care for His creation, but always under his authority, giving Him glory at every step (Rev 4:11).
Because God is perfect in all His ways, there is no justifiable reason to reject His authority as our king. Yet we did. In Adam, we all turned away from God (Isa 53:6). We reject his authority, power and kingship of our lives. As a result, we have a broken relationship with God the Father. He is no longer our friend (Eph 2:1-3) nor is He our father (John 8:42-44). By Adam’s actions, we have an inborn nature that is rebellious toward God (Ps 58:3) and we actively run in the opposite direction of him.
Because God deserves our praise, worship, obedience and the sacrifice of our lives, He is perfectly just in His judgment of mankind (Gen 2:16-17, 3:1-24) as well as us individually (Mk 16:16; John 3:17-18). We deserve to be cast away from God, punished for our disobedience. This punishment and banishment is typically called death, spiritual death and is commonly referred to as ‘hell.’ This eternal punishment is where each and every person is destined unless someone intervenes.
Someone did.
Because of His love and generosity, God did not leave us to suffer the consequences of our foolish rebellion without hope. Because of His great love, God sent His own son in the form of a man, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus did what we are incapable of, live a perfectly pleasing life before God (Heb 4:15). He was blameless and sinless, yet He allowed himself to be put to death…why?
The amazing Good News is that Jesus died as a substitute for a rebellious people like you and me. In His suffering and death, He took the full force of God’s wrath over our rebellion, so that forgiveness and pardon might be offered to us (2 Cor 5:21; 1 Peter 3:18).
But Jesus did not remain dead. God raised Him from the dead and in so doing made a way for others to have life (1 Cor 15:54-56). By putting your trust in Jesus completed work and not your own works, you are given peace with God (Romans 5:1), a relationship with the lover of your souls and eternal life (John 3:16; 1 Peter 1:3-4).
