Jesus preached the good news of peace (Eph 6:15)  The penalty of being a fallen human being is to have a split personality.  In fallen human nature the beast and the angel are strangely intermingled.   Man’s trouble has always been that he is haunted both by sin and saintliness.  Robert Burns said, regarding himself, “My life reminded me of a ruined Temple.  What strength, what proportion in some parts!  What unsightly gaps, what prostrate ruins in others.”  The coming of Christ Jesus cures that disintegrated personality and enables victory over the warring self through being conquered by Christ.

Jesus preached the good news of God’s promise (Eph 3:6).  It is true that men have always tended to think of God as a God of threats rather than a God of promises.  Look at the way some say the God of the Old Testament was mean – it demonstrates they still fail to understand who God is.  God’s grace (i.e. unmerited divine favor) is demonstrated in that portion of The Book, it is just much harder to see than it is in the latter portion which begins with the Gospel (Injil) accounts.

Jesus preached the good news of immortality (2^nd Tim 1:10)  To the pagan and the Sadducees alike, life was the road to death; man was characteristically a dying man; but Jesus came with the good news that through Him we are on the way to life.  The pagans that did believe in an afterlife had a rather dark view of what it amounts to.  But, of course, disbelievers in Isa, as revealed in the Holy Bible, should have a dark view of what the afterlife will be like for them.  The fact of the matter is that there was a time when you were not, but now there will never be a time will you will no longer be.

Jesus preached the good news (Eph 1:13) of salvation.  Salvation is not simply liberation from penalty and escape from the consequences of past sin; it is the power to live life victoriously and to conquer sin.  That makes the message of Messiah good news indeed.

Jesus preached the good news of Repentance.  Unfortunately, repentance is not as easy as we tend to think.  The Greek word metanoia literally means a change of mind.  That is part of the reason a new follower of Isa has such a difficult time trying to walk in holiness of heart and life; he knows he is a new creature, but he still has the old habits and needs help.  Of course, it does not help when the tradition of men gets in the way by suggesting that it cannot be done.  As for traditions, the earliest hadiths are only the result of traditions and created by men over a hundred years after Muhammad. – exceprt from my book “The Holy One Called Isa”

–Pastor Ward Clinton