The Gospel as Story

Last year a friend asked me to summarize the gospel as though I was explaining it to a young child. Here's my attempt. How would you answer that question?

When God created the world, it was good. There weren't any weeds or sickness, and Adam and Eve didn't hurt one another intentionally or unintentionally. Then the serpent beguiled Eve into tasting the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which God had instructed them
not to eat, and then Adam ate of the fruit.

They tried to hide from God because they knew they had done wrong. And ever since then, the goodness of creation has been mixed with evil. All people have struggled with sin's affects in the world—death, toil, pain, sorrow. And even our motives have become twisted and turned on themselves so that even when we try to do the right thing, we often do it just to stay out of trouble or to get other people to do what we want, and we end up justifying all kinds of bad things in our minds because they don't look bad to us...until after we do them.

But God had always had a bigger purpose for humans and for the world He had given them to rule. So in His mercy, He chose people throughout history and established a relationship with them. He began to reveal Himself to them and revealed to them how they should behave toward one another and what kind of sacrifices were necessary to cover their sin, but this law only revealed how really sinful they were.

So God in His mercy sent Jesus, His Son, to be born a human, under the law, and to die so that Christ's blood could be the final payment for sin. Then Jesus rose again, proving that He had defeated sin and death. Then a little while later, his disciples saw Him ascend into heaven and sit at the right hand of God.

The Holy Spirit works in our hearts and minds, convincing us this story is true and giving us the faith to believe it. Those who do not believe it will go on with their minds and hearts twisted by sin, imagining they are not dependant on God. And in the end they will experience what Adam and Eve only partly experienced—utter separation from everything good and comforting and alive and beautiful.

But the story doesn't end for those who experience the mercy of God, who are grafted into Jesus, the last Adam. They will gradually become untwisted, and even when they die, they look forward to a day when even this world with it's death and toil and pain and sorrow is remade into something even more alive and growing and healed and joyous...and they will live in and enjoy the presence of God forever.