We believe this earthly life is filled with goodness, creativity, joy, grandeur, and love. We believe human beings, having been created in God’s image, through our hands bring much good into the world as a gift from God. Yet, we also believe that neither humanity nor our world are what they ought to be. Creation’s beauty is marred by hatred; injustice often prevails for many seasons; death seems to trump life. However, the Christian response to the human condition in a fallen world is not indifference or despair—but hope!

We are hopeful because God has intervened redemptively in history.

We believe that the God who created everything good has not abandoned the world to a progressively tragic condition—quite the opposite. Intervening in history, he has replaced death with life; futility with hope; injustice with peace; and evil with good. Because of His great love, he actively works to redeem this fallen world, restoring it to a state of enduring goodness and grace. The New Testament refers to this singular good news as the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

How Has God Intervened in History?

God’s supreme act of redemption unfolds in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. We believe Jesus is uniquely God and man because of the miracle of the incarnation—the Christmas story. We believe that in becoming a human being, God embraced us in a manner that demonstrates His love for the human race in a dignifying and sympathetic way. We also believe that Jesus’ unique death on the cross—the truly innocent on behalf of the truly guilty—accomplishes the forgiveness of human sin, and sounds the defeat of every evil supernatural force loose in the world.

We affirm that His resurrection from the dead proves His victory on the cross to have been complete in its scope and genuine in its meaning. Not only does the resurrection symbolize Jesus’ victory on our behalf over sin, evil, and death, it also forecasts what God desires to be the destiny of humankind and the world: the future—full of hope, life, and peace—that belongs to Jesus.

But What Difference Does God’s Redemptive Work Make for Us Today?

Wonderfully, we need not wait for the future to begin experiencing fulfilling life and peace. We can have encounters with our Creator and Redeemer that provide glimpses of the world to come—all within our daily circumstances. We can be reminded that what we do in this life, though it may seem futile, is instead susceptible to God’s redemptive work. The nihilistic impulses often arriving on the heels of our failures and frustrations give way to the hope of a better future that God Himself promises to provide. We can regularly experience forgiveness for our sins simply by offering prayers of repentance to God, based on Jesus’ death on our behalf.

God also illuminates our minds with His infinite wisdom gleaned through the prayerful and thoughtful study of His inspired Scriptures, the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. And our relationships with our friends and loved ones take on eternal weight as we grow in our ability to love and be loved as Christ has loved each of us.

Jesus’ victory on our behalf is certain and total. Although its scope will not be realized until he ushers in the world to come, he intends for us to begin experiencing the benefits of this victory right now.

So What Does God’s Victory on Our Behalf Look Like?

This victory actually alters how we live in ways we can’t hope to change on our own: God desires for us, His divine image bearers, to fully live life—just as he intends in the world to come. God desires for us to enjoy friendships, loved ones, food, drink, art, vocation, and family in the robust way he originally intended. Sadly, because we are held captive by the human condition in this fallen world, we all fail to live like this. Jesus commonly referred to this failure as sin, which puts us out of step with God’s desires our life, and has no place whatsoever in the renewed world Jesus has prepared.

However, our sin need not dominate our lives if we turn to God for help. The forgiveness and renewal Jesus made ours for the asking through His death and resurrection enables us to enjoy a sincere friendship with God in the here and now. This friendship, through which we ask Him for help, is how God changes us so we can live now with the peaceful blessings that will characterize the world to come.

© 2010 Grace Chicago Church