We at Valley believe and teach that, until Christ returns, His church has the joyful duty to make disciples of all nations. We not only evangelize non-Christians; we also attempt to provide an evangelistic example for others to apply according to their own abilities in their various relationships.
In brief, God’s good news focuses on five key truths related to salvation: gift, sin, God, Jesus, and faith.
Salvation is a gift. It’s not something we can ever earn or deserve. Why? Because we’re sinners. We aren’t what God requires us to be. We don’t do what He requires us to do. We can’t be or do what He requires of us.
Salvation, then, must come from God, who is both just and merciful. Because He’s just, He must punish sin. Thankfully, He’s also merciful, so He has determined to save sinners.
It is through Jesus alone that God both punishes sin and saves from sin. As God, Jesus fully satisfied God’s just punishment of sinners when He died in their place on the cross. As sinless man, Jesus also did what we sinners haven’t done and can’t do: He perfectly obeyed God as He lived and died. Once He had done His Father’s will in life and death, Jesus was raised from the dead and became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him.
The salvation provided by Jesus becomes ours through faith alone: looking away from ourselves, we receive and rest in Jesus alone for our salvation.
As ambassadors for Christ, we appeal to you: acknowledge that you’re a sinner in God’s sight, justly deserving His displeasure, and without hope except in His sovereign mercy. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God and Savior of sinners; receive and rest upon Him alone for salvation as He is offered to you in the Gospel!
Below is a more complete statement of the truths related to the gospel, God’s good news for sinners.
Salvation is a sovereign work of God by which He graciously saves sinners from the judgment they deserve and adopts them as His children with all the blessings of eternal life. To make known the way of salvation, God has given us the Bible, the Old and New Testaments, as His Word (2 Timothy 3:15-16). The Bible teaches the following truths concerning the way of salvation.
The only living and true God is one God in three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Deuteronomy 6:4; John 1:1-4, 14, 18; Hebrews 1:2-3). He is the sovereign King over His creation, and He rules it with all the perfections of His character (Isaiah 48:12-13; Ephesians 1:11; Romans 11:36).
God created man male and female with the duty to obey His commandments and to imitate His character perfectly (Genesis 1:26-28; 2:15-17). Through the sin of the first man, Adam, all human beings, except our Lord Jesus Christ, were made sinners. As sinners we are all entirely unfaithful to our duty to God and are therefore justly condemned by God to suffer eternal punishment (Romans 3:23; 5:18-19).
To save sinners from the punishment they deserve, God the Father sent the eternal Son of God, Jesus Christ, who is fully God and fully man, into the world (1 Timothy 1:15; John 3:16). As sinless man, Jesus Christ was able to represent sinners as the One who perfectly obeyed God’s commandments and flawlessly imitated His character. As God, He was able to substitute for sinners as the One who fully satisfied God’s just punishment of sinners. In His life Christ was entirely faithful where sinners are entirely unfaithful. In His death He bore the punishment sinners justly deserve (2 Corinthians 5:21; Romans 3:24-26).
God the Father raised Christ Jesus from the dead and thereby furnished proof that He has fixed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness through that same Christ Jesus (Acts 17:31). God the Father also enthroned the resurrected Christ in heaven, and from there Christ now reigns as King of the nations, commanding sinners everywhere to repent and believe in Him as their only hope of salvation from the wrath to come (Acts 4:12; 16:31; 17:30).
All those to whom God gives repentance and faith wait in hope for Christ’s return on the day of resurrection and judgment. In that day, God will cast those who remain in their sins into the lake of fire to suffer eternal punishment, and He will usher His people into the new heavens and the new earth to enjoy everlasting glory (Acts 13:48; 2 Timothy 2:25; Romans 9:18; 2 Thessalonians 2:11-12; 2 Peter 3:7, 13).