Dear Friends,

The Gospel of Salvation in the Bible is a glorious free and gracious offer, but it also comes with a solemn warning against rejecting or ignoring it. This is expressed very clearly in a testimony given by John the Baptist, which is recorded for us in John's Gospel chapter 3 and verse 36.

The words are as follows - "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him."

I would like to talk with you this month about both these sides of the Gospel witness. I do it with the conviction that there is no other matter in all the world that is so important for each of us as this Gospel witness.

Firstly let us consider the Gospel offer. There is nothing in all the world quite like it. It is an offer to those who are totally bankrupt and offers infinite wealth.

Here is the wonder. It is an offer to everyone. The word used is "Whoever". There is no condition or qualification. It does not take into account any difference between anyone. No one is more favoured than another. It does not make any difference how bad we may have been. Neither our nationality, colour, ability, intelligence, social position, or anything else has any bearing on this offer. It is made to every human being wherever and whenever they live and there is no condition of age. From the youngest to the oldest, all are able to receive this offer.

It is a free offer which no one is unable to respond to and receive. All are able to receive a gift, and this is a gift. There is nothing to pay. There is no standard to attain in order to qualify. There are no 'ifs or 'buts'. There is no small print which tells of conditions to exclude from this offer.

All that is required is to believe in the Son - that is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, that he is the Son of God, and put our lives into his care, protection and authority.

It is something like coming to an investment manager, and handing over all our capital to him, and allowing him to invest it, trusting him completely to invest it and look after our money so that our capital will be safe and increase. We do trust investment managers like this, even though there is no 100% certainty that they will not let us down, not necessarily because they are bad or foolish, but simply because with the best will in the world they can't guarantee anything absolutely certainly, because the money markets are volatile.

Putting our trust in Jesus Christ, however, has none of the uncertainty of an investment manager, and so we can trust him with absolute certainty.

What we trust him for is Eternal Life. This is everything in life we can possibly hope for. It is the best quality of life in this present temporal existence, and it includes continued life forever with the best quality, when this temporal life is over. Jesus looks after all our needs, financially, emotionally, physically, spiritually, mentally, in fact in every way. We can be without care, when we believe on Jesus for now and eternity. If we are anxious it is not because Jesus has failed, but because we are not resting in trust upon him as we should.

But now let me consider with you the warning. It is not a threat. It is not God coming to us and saying that you either accept my terms or I will clobber you. It is just a statement of fact.

The truth about us is that as we are born into this world, we are born mortal and without spiritual and eternal life, and because we are born sinful we are born with God's wrath already poured out against us. Notice what our verse says - "the wrath of God remains on him". The wrath of God is not poured out on us if we reject God's offer of life. The fact is that God's wrath is the condition we are already in, and why it remains on us if we reject the Gospel is because we have rejected the only way of escape from this wrath which is already upon us.

The warning is simply this, that if we do not receive God's offer of life in Jesus we are left as we are. Nothing further is placed upon us or done to us. There is nothing worse in the future that has been pronounced against us because we reject Jesus, but simply we remain as we were before and as we always have been, which is to be under the wrath of God.

The wrath of God is a terrible thing. It is his implacable set purpose to punish and eliminate all that falls short of his glory, because what falls short of his glory cannot live or abide in his presence.

The wonder of God's offer is that, although he feels this way about those who have marred his glory, yet he comes in love and provides in Jesus Christ the means for us to be saved from that failure, and brought into the life with him that failure denied us.

All that remains for me to say now is where do you stand with regard to this offer of eternal life from God? Have you believed and so have life, or have you rejected the offer or ignored it or just not considered it? This offer of life from God through belief in Jesus Christ is the only way of safety and life, so if you have not accept it, may I beg you to do so now, because there is no other way to life.

Your servant for Christ's sake,