Have you ever wondered what God says to humanity? Sometimes, when people think about God, they imagine he comes with a long list of demands, warnings and conditions. They may picture themselves standing before God wondering whether they have done enough to receive his approval, earn his love, or secure his forgiveness. But the gospel gives us a different answer. God’s decisive word to humanity is ‘Yes’ – and that ‘Yes’ is Jesus Christ.

Paul, in the header scripture, tells us that all God’s promises find their ‘Yes’ in Christ. Jesus is not simply the messenger who tells us that God loves us. Jesus himself is the revelation and embodiment of God’s love; in him we see the Father’s heart and discover what God has done to restore humanity to communion with himself. The incarnation is at the very heart of the gospel: the eternal Son of God became fully human; he entered into our world, shared our human experience and lived in perfect trust and obedience towards the Father. Jesus did not come simply to show us how we ought to live; he came to do for us what we could never do for ourselves.

In Jesus, God has embraced our humanity. This is why the gospel is more than a message about something Jesus accomplished in the past: it is good news about who Jesus is and what he continues to be for us. The Son who became human remains our representative and mediator. Through his death, resurrection and ascension, humanity has been brought into a new relationship with the Father.

The cross demonstrates the depth of this divine ‘Yes’. God does not respond to human sin by abandoning or rejecting us. Instead, in Christ, God enters into the depths of our brokenness and overcomes sin and death through self-giving love. The resurrection declares that sin and death do not have the final word, and in the ascension Jesus does not leave his humanity behind: the risen Son carries our humanity into the presence of the Father. As our representative, Jesus remains the faithful human who lives in perfect communion with the Father, so that we are now seated with him in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 2:6 ESVUK).

There will be days when we feel uncertain, inadequate or unworthy. On those days, our confidence does not rest in the strength of our faith or the quality of our performance. It rests in Jesus. God’s ‘Yes’ does not change when our circumstances change. When we succeed, Christ is our confidence. When we fail, Christ is our confidence. When we understand, Christ is our confidence. When we struggle to understand, Christ remains our confidence. The gospel, therefore, invites us to look away from ourselves and look to Jesus. In him we discover that God’s answer to humanity is not rejection but reconciliation, not condemnation but grace, not distance but communion, not separation but presence.

This changes the way we understand our Christian life. We are not trying to persuade God to accept us: we are learning to trust and participate in the acceptance already given to us in Christ. Our faith is a response to God’s prior grace. Our ‘Amen’ is our grateful participation in Christ’s own ‘Yes’ to the Father. We are simply learning to say ‘yes’ to him, and as we do so, we can face today and tomorrow with hope, because our life is held securely in Christ.

Local congregation:
Grace Communion West Hampstead 
Sidings Community Centre
150 Brassey Road
West Hampstead
London
NW6 2BA

Meeting time:
Sunday 12.30 pm

Local congregational contact:
Gordon Brown
gordon.brown@gracecom.church

Word of Life contact:  
wordoflife@gracecom.church