Lee Strobel

You know, the Bible is 700,000 words plus.

It's a big book.

It's 66 books.

It can be very complicated to go through and to try to figure out, you know, exactly what's the central message.

I say, you know what, give me 21 words.

One verse to me sums up everything.

Romans 6.23 says, "...for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord."

So the wage of sin is death.

What we deserve, what we earn, the consequences of living a life opposing God, failing to follow his teachings and so forth, the consequence of that is death, which means eternal separation from God.

Nobody wants that.

That's what hell is.

But the free gift of God, not something we have to earn.

We don't have to go through a process of education and so forth.

The free gift of God is eternal life.

How?

Through Christ Jesus our Lord.

In other words, he went to the cross.

He paid the penalty we deserve for the sins that we've committed, and he offers forgiveness and eternal life as a free gift of his grace.

So I don't want to lose the fact that so often in history we've added things to that and we've made it, oh, yeah, but you've got to do this and you've got to do that and you've got to do this.

No.