THE GOSPEL

We strive to be an encouraging environment that allows folks to come as they are and safely explore a faith in the life giving message of Jesus. Why do we say life giving? We believe that Jesus is the "Good News". He is the "scandal" that challenges every culture and every society throughout history. Ultimately Jesus, a person, is Emmanuel; God with us. He is a gift to be received, and that gift is the ultimate source of all hope for our very broken world. The Gospel is good news — the good news of what God has done (not anything I do or haven't done) through Jesus Christ. In summary: we are sinful, forgiven, and eternally thankful.

Jesus lived for you.

Some 2,000 years ago God lived on earth as a real man, fully human and fully God at the very same time. His name was and is Jesus, which means Emanuel, God with us. Scholars may disagree about some things of Jesus’ life, but one thing almost all agree on, is the fact that a real man named Jesus lived in Israel. But it is how he lived that really matters. He lived Perfectly, without sin. While only on earth, for a short lived 33 years, he lived in a way that no one has matched in 100 years of life, or every human being put together has been able to do. No one is more loved. No one is more hated. Jesus chose to enter into human history and the mess of it all and live his life that way for you and me. A life we can never live after the fall and in our broken state separated from God due to our sinful nature. Jesus tells us that he has come to give us life, life abundant, and life eternal - not condemnation. And we can experience that right here on earth by claiming his perfectness and goodness, not our own.

Jesus died for you.

Tortured, beaten, spit on, whipped, nailed, hung, pierced. This was not the way you would expect the God of the universe to go out and to suffer. He suffered the worst kind of death, and he did it all for you and me. Jesus truly paid it all. We believe he died the way he did to accomplish something none of us could accomplish on our own. The least deserving person died the most heinous death to pay for our mistakes. To become the greatest sinner ever known by taking on all the wrongs done against God and paying the price demanded for sin, death. I bet if you take a real hard look at your life, you would agree that you haven’t been perfect or anywhere near it. While in our own strength none of us are perfect, Jesus died in order to make us perfect in God’s eyes and restore our broken relationship with our creator. Will we keep messing up this side of things? You bet we will, but Jesus died for those mistakes too.

Jesus rose for you.

We believe Jesus conquered death itself and rose from the grave. We cannot explain how he did it, but we believe it to be true. Real people who walked right alongside Jesus believed he rose from the dead and saw him after his resurrection. They believed it so much that they too died for it. Because Jesus rose from the dead, we believe he paved the way for us to do the same. Sadly we all have to die here on this earth, but God made a way for us to live on forever. That way is Jesus. If you don’t believe that yet, that’s OK too. We hope and pray you will someday. And we would love to get to know you a bit in the meantime, and help you build your relationship with this person named Jesus.

“Despite our efforts to keep him out, God intrudes. The life of Jesus is bracketed by two impossibilities: "a virgin's womb and an empty tomb". Jesus entered our world through a door marked," No Entrance" and left through a door marked "No Exit."“ -Peter Larson

We Believe Jesus:

1. Is God

He was born a miraculous birth, of a virgin, He lived a sinless life, He worked miracles and gave us an example to follow. He is fully God and fully man and now sits at the right hand of the Father to intercede for us.

John 1:1-5; Hebrews 1:3; Colossians 1:15

2. Was resurrected from the dead

Without the resurrection there is no faith, Christianity, or any hope for the future. He rose from the dead, appeared to eyewitnesses, and is still at work today through the Holy Spirit. His resurrection isn’t just about our future, but the importance of our present life. “On earth as it is in Heaven” isn’t simply a habitual prayer, but becomes a legitimate reality.

John 11:25-26; 1 Thessalonians 4:14; 1 Corinthians 15:14; 1 Corinthians 15:17

3. Saves us by grace [The Good News]

We are not saved by the gospel of “try harder”, or our good deeds, nor do we have the ability to earn our way into Heaven. We are saved by the gracious act of Jesus being our substitute.

Our God is a loving God; however, He is also a Holy God. Isaiah 55:8-9

Too often today we hear, God is “nice”, and God is “love”, and so faith and grace become simply an understanding that by just believing in or having a knowledge of God, everything will turn out “nice”. But we look all around us at the brokenness of this world and our own lives and quickly realize, things, this world, and our lives are anything but “nice”. NOTHING functions as it should, including us (you and me included).

Listen to the Old Testament prophet, Jeremiah, thousands of years ago:

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt… Jeremiah 17:9a

That is all he says. But in those two lines you have the explanation of all the misery and heartache and injustice and evil of life. It all stems from that. The heart, the natural life into which we were born, has two things wrong with it. First, it is desperately corrupt. This means it never can function as it originally was designed to do. It can never fulfill all you expect of it. It will never fulfill your ideals, or bring you to the place where you can be what you would like to be. It is corrupt. It is infected with a fatal virus. And it cannot be changed. There is nothing you can do about it, ultimately. It is useless and wasted. Therefore there is only one thing it is good for -- to be put to death. And that is exactly what the Lord Jesus Christ did with it when he died some centuries later. He took that fatal nature, human nature, and he put it to death, because that was all it was good for.

I know that many people have trouble at this point. This is the verse, among others like it in the Scriptures, which divides humanity right down the center. You either believe this verse, and act the rest of your life in these terms, understanding this fact, or you deny it and say, "It is not true; man is basically good." It is either one side or the other. Your whole system of philosophy and of education and of legislation, and everything else, will be determined by which one of those views you take. This is the Great Divide of mankind, right here.

It is amazing, but I think one of the greatest confirmations of the truth in this verse is the Constitution of the United States of America. Our founding fathers were so aware of this great fact -- that man, by nature, is desperately corrupt -- that they never trusted a single man, even the best of them, with ultimate power. They set up checks and balances by which any man in office, even the most admired of men, would have his power scrutinized and examined by others. They did not trust anybody, and rightfully so! I have often quoted these words from Winston Churchill, an astute observer of life:

Certain it is that, while men are gathering knowledge and power with ever-increasing speed, their virtues and their wisdom have not shown any notable improvement as the centuries have rolled. Under sufficient stress -- starvation, terror, warlike passion, or even cold intellectual frenzy -- the modern man we know so well will do the most terrible deeds, and his modern woman will back him up. Churchill understood this verse: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt." No system of philosophy, of psychology, of education, will ever serve to eliminate the wrongful, evil failing of the human heart. It cannot be done. We have to face life on those terms. Ray Stedman, To Whom Shall We Go?

Jesus became, and is, our substitute

Jesus lived the life you and I should have lived (fulfilled the demands of God’s law, His way), Jesus fulfilled the demands of breaking God’s law, being sent to die on a cross (essentially becoming the greatest sinner that ever lived and the wrath deserved for you and I taken out on Him), resurrecting from the dead, and establishing His power and victory over sin (that same power and promise offered to us [you and me] - absolutely free!). Romans 3:20-24; Ephesians 2:8; Ezekiel 33:11

4. Commanded us to love

Love is not simply a feeling or an emotion, it’s an action first. All of us want to belong, feel accepted, and significant. If we truly understand the love and grace of Jesus, we will love ALL people and show them that there is no greater acceptance, sense of belonging, and significance than through the love of Jesus.

1 John 4:19 In other words: We would not even know what love is, if God did not show us and demonstrate it!

1 John 4:10-11; Romans 5:8; Matthew 5:43-45; Matthew 5:46; Proverbs 24:17; Proverbs 25:21; John 13:34-35

5. Told us to go

Faith in Jesus isn’t just a personal, private emotion or feeling. It is a transforming life change that should force us to share that faith with others. If the message of Jesus is true then our lives should outwardly show it to everyone who crosses our path throughout Camden, Maine and beyond. We aren’t here to idly sit by and complain about what is wrong with our community or this world, then hope that someone else will fix it. We are told to GO! Jesus can and will do great things through YOU and our community here at CSBC!

Matthew 28:19-20

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Philippians 2:5-11