Jesus came not to condemn. He came to save. He didn’t come to criticize or critique. He didn’t come to instruct or advise or counsel. He didn’t come to help us be obedient or clean up our act. He didn’t come to make us better people. He came to make us new people. You see, better people don’t get to heaven. Only new people do, those who have been born anew by the Holy Spirit. He didn’t come to make us savable. He came to actually save us.

The gospel is not about what we are supposed to do for God. It is about what God has done, and continues to do, for us. The gospel is good news that a burden has been lifted. It is not bad news that a burden has been placed on us. You see, if the Christian life is all about commands and obedience and a list of things that we are supposed to do and not do, then that would amount to a burden of expectations that God places on us, and that’s not good news. Good news is to be told that someone better, more holy, more pure, more righteous than I’ll ever be has come to my rescue, that he is here to live for me, that he does for me what I cannot do for myself. The good news of the gospel is that we have a substitute who has come to live for us.

This is exactly what Jesus said. Listen to John 3:16-18. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” Jesus did not come to condemn; he came to save. So how does Jesus save us? He saves us through our faith in him. We avoid perishing and obtain eternal life through faith in Jesus, by believing in him. And when we believe, we are not condemned; but when we do not believe, we stand condemned already. Jesus did not come to condemn. He didn’t have to. Without him and without faith in him, we are already condemned. We, in fact, avoid the condemnation that is already on us by believing in Jesus.

Now what does it mean to believe in Jesus? It doesn’t simply mean to believe that Jesus existed or that he was a good person or even that he was the Son of God and savior of sinners. To believe in Jesus means to allow him to be your substitute. Jesus is not a model; he’s a substitute. He’s not a coach, he’s a pinch-hitter. He didn’t come to tell us what to do; he came to do it for us. I may believe that I have a Hall of Fame hitter in my dugout, but if I do not let him bat for me, then I do not really believe in him. I may admit that he exists and that he is in my dugout. I may acknowledge him. I may recognize his value and his worth and his abilities. I may even appreciate that he has pinch-hit for others. But I am not exhibiting faith in him unless I let him take my place.

We must let Jesus take our place. We must let him die for us and we must let him live for us. We must not try to produce our own righteousness, our own salvation, our own sense of life and meaning and value and worth through doing, keeping commands, being a better person. We must accept as our own his perfect life and not insult him by trying to do it ourselves, by trying to be “a good person.” We do not have faith in ourselves or our efforts or our accomplishments or our character. We do not even have faith in our faith. We have faith in Jesus by letting him be our substitute.

Is the theme of the Christian life faith or obedience? And this is an important question. It determines how we view God and ourselves, and what it means to live as a Christian. Life is about faith, because without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6). Is life about doing what God says or believing who God is? You can’t do what God says until you believe who God is, that he is our all-sufficient Substitute. God doesn’t come instructing us what to do. He comes telling us to believe in One who has already done it for us. Doing always flows from believing.

When we are lying on our deathbed (and every day between now and then), we do not need to know about the commands of God. We will never be able to keep those commands, and to think that we have “done our best” by keeping many of them, most of the time, simply shows how little we think of God’s holy character. Instead we need to know about Jesus, our Savior, our Substitute, the one who has done all for us. Christianity is about believing, not doing.