How True is the Gospel?

Many people that hear the gospel right for the first time, receive it in unbelief. Their response upon being told that Christ died for their sins and rose again, might go like this, "But I don't believe that" or, "I didn't ask him to".
My reply back would be, "That's not the issue, it's true whether you believe it or not."
The point is, this Gospel of God is a reality whether we believe it or not. It's also true that it's only efficacious for us upon exercising faith in it, but the fact remains, that its already true and is not reliant upon our faith to make it true. This is not a perfect comparison, but for instance, if a Governor pardoned a deathrow inmate, that pardon is not efficacious until the inmate signs it, but the fact is that the pardon is a reality whether the inmate believes it or not. If the inmate is in unbelief and fails to sign it, he still dies. That is exactly the situation of the entire human race. Every person stands already guilty before God, condemned by his own moral standard. God has given us another way or means by which we can be saved from his wrath and the judgment to come, and that is through or by the means of the only sinless Man that ever lived, Jesus Christ. He has made peace with us through the blood of the cross and offered us a pardon free from all religion and self effort. All we do to access this free gift is to believe that Jesus did it all. Simply believe that Jesus finished it and be saved from the wrath to come. That's as simple as it gets. You might say that it sounds too good to be true, and I agree that it does. I still stand in robes of amazement. The fact remains that it is true.

The gospel doesn't come to us on our level. It rises far above our own understanding and experience. It seems unbelievable at first, because it remains so far removed from our reality, yet we who are saved believe it. Why? Because God said it. There is no work that we could do that honours God more then by simply believing what He says. God says that He so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son and anyone that would place their faith in Him would be saved. That's a wonderful promise and believing that, with the whole heart, changes a person forever.

So here we are justified by faith before God. Many people then want to be "sanctified" and this they say involves works. Not according to the bible though. When reading Roman ch6 (KJV preferably) pay close attention to the tense (past, present, or future) and you will find that our sanctification is already past. Justification and sanctification are one work and all that is required is faith. The gospel is two fold. Not only did Christ die for our sins but we died with Him to our sins. You might find that unbelievable because you didn't experience it. I say, what does our experience have anything to do with it? We have become members (fingers, arms, legs...) of Christ's literal body and with that we share the same history. In simpler terms, we were there with Jesus when he spoke to the women at the well. We were there when He was baptized. We were there at the last supper. We were there when he was beaten and whipped. We were there when he was crucified, buried, raised and ascended to the right hand of God. Our old man, (our entire identity or all that we were in Adam) was crucified with Him and thereby freed from our body where sin dwelt. The end result, we are freed from the dominion that sin had over us. No longer are we a slave to sin. The fact is, he who is dead is freed from sin. You might say that you can hardly believe that. What's that go to do with it. If you're saved it's already true whether you believe it or not. This is something that God worked out in Christ over 2000 yrs ago and is a fact whether we believe it or not. That's how true it is. This gospel of sanctification is not something we work out in our experience but something that God did to us in Christ and we entered into when we believed the gospel. When this takes hold you will boldly proclaim that you are free from the power of sin, that sin does not have dominion over you, and it is all because of what happened what Jesus did on the cross. In this, God gets all the glory and you just live in His reality, not your own.