Hello, everyone. Today, I have decided to share with you the letter I wrote to all of my co-workers for Valentine’s Day. I work in a Christian preschool, and while everyone has professed Christ (it is a part of the job requirement), there have been some instances which have concerned me. That being said, I do not know anyone well enough to tell of their eternal state, only the Lord does. This weighed on me for a while, and I decided that Valentines Day was the best opportunity to be able to share the Gospel with everyone.
I borrowed some sections from my page, The Gospel, and Wretched Radio’s Don’t Stub Your Toe Booklet. I was able to hand some out, but most of them were left in teachers mailboxes. Please join me in prayer that, if these men and women are not saved, the Lord would save them. Pray that, if my co-workers are saved, the Lord would grow them in their maturity and understanding of the Gospel. Pray for me as well, and that I would be consistent in sharing the Gospel and in my attitude at work. Without further ado, the following is what I wrote:
“Happy Valentines Day!
The reason why I am doing this is because I believe that, while Valentine’s Day may be a holiday that emphasizes romantic relationships, we should always take time to celebrate love. As I was thinking about what else to write, I realized that the most loving thing I could do was share the Gospel, something that draws us all together due to our workplace. Most, if not all, of my coworkers profess to be Christian, but I ask that you would still read the rest of this letter and let it be a sweet reminder and encouragement to you. If you are not a Christian, (and only the Lord knows the heart, not me), then I pray you would read this and be saved by Christ.
The Gospel is this:
God made the universe and everything in it.You were created by God, and for God. (Col 1:16) You are an image bearer of the Maker of heaven and earth. (Gen 1:26). This is something to always rejoice in, something very beautiful. Because we are made by God, we may be tempted to say that we are, overall, good people who will go to heaven. However, this is not the case.
While this might sound counterintuitive, the most horrifying sentence we could ever hear is, “God is good.” God is thoroughly righteous, holy, just, and loving (Ps 145:7, 1 Sam 2:2, Ps 136).Because God is good, He loves everything that is good: kindness, generosity, love, faithfulness, patience, grace, mercy, charity, gentleness, compassion, honesty, etc. (Phil 4:8) Because God loves all things that are good, He necessarily hates everything that is not good: cruelty, murder, theft, violence, hatred, lying, greed, bullying, immorality, unrighteous anger, etc. (Ps 97:10, 1 Cor 6:9-10). As we look to His written law, the 10 Commandments (Exodus 20), we are easily able to realize that we have not kept His law perfectly. This doesn’t seem like a big deal at first, but Romans 6:23 informs us of the wages of sin — death. By disobeying God, by breaking His laws, we have earned death for ourselves (spiritually, physically, and perpetually for eternity).
This sounds bleak, and it is necessarily so; because God is good, He must be just. However, this is not the end of the story. God does not want to send you to hell. God “is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance. (2 Peter 3:9)” God does indeed send sinners to hell, but that is His peculiar work. God prefers to save sinners, not condemn them. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came to this earth on a rescue mission to seek and save lost people. Jesus Christ, the second Person of the Trinity, took on human flesh, became man, lived a perfect life, and died a brutal death so your sins can be forgiven. (Matt., Mrk, Luke, Jhn.). The significance of this is that the Bible teaches “without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” of sins (Heb 9:22). He died in our place; the Messiah laid His life down for us. God is good, holy, righteous, and just while also being loving, forgiving, and merciful. To put it in an analogy, Christ willingly “paid the fine” for our crimes. Such love that He has for us!
Christ invites us to share in this glory, to be declared ‘innocent’ from a Righteous Judge. When we repent of our sin and trust fully in the Savior to rescue us from our own sinfulness, we become new creations! “The old has gone, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17)! Repentance is to reject your old sinful ways of living (by feeling the weight of our guilt before God) and make a 180-turn towards God and His good, righteous character/statutes (Acts 3:19). To trust Christ is to understand that only He has the power and authority to rescue you from your sin. We could never earn our own way to Heaven because of our sin. Whereas before, we were held captive to sin, utterly powerless and given zero reason even to fight against it, now, we are slaves to Christ and His righteousness (Romans 6:18)! What a great love He has shown to us, to save us.
This is not something I would share if I didn’t truly believe it. It is never pleasant to be told that you aren’t a good person and that you are headed to an eternity in hell, and I recognize that. But this true, good news is too amazing not to share.
Ephesians 2:4-6
But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
With LOVE,
Emily.”