This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
1 JOHN 4:10
When Adam and Eve sinned, God graciously provided a covering for their shame (Genesis 3:21). So, too, He provides a covering for our sin through His Son, Jesus Christ. Once again, His love reached out to sustain us.
Even though we all are sinners (Romans 3:23), and the penalty for sin is death and eternal separation from Him (Romans 6:23), God loved us in the midst of our evil, rebellious ways. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Apart from His help, we could never bridge the gap between our sinful selves and the perfect, holy Lord. So He, in His love, made the way for us (Ephesians 2:4-5).
He sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to live a perfect, sinless human life, then to die on a cross on our behalf, taking all of our sin upon Himself, as the perfect sacrifice and payment for our sins. As our high priest, Jesus “offered for all time one sacrifice for sins. . . For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy” (Hebrews 10:12-14). After bearing all the burden of our sin, Christ rose victorious from the grave, resurrected, having destroyed the power of death (1 Corinthians 15:54-57, Hebrews 2:14-15). He then ascended back to His Father to reign with Him eternally (Hebrews 1:3).
And amazingly for us, now He offers us His righteousness in exchange for our sin! “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). All we need to do to receive this gift of eternal life through Christ and a restored relationship to God is to believe that Jesus is Lord and trust in His atoning sacrifice on our behalf. “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9).
With His righteousness attributed to you, you are forgiven for all your sin and reconciled to God (“while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son,” Romans 5:10). This means you now have full access to God! “In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence” (Ephesians 3:12). And the image of God in you is in the beginning stages of restoration (1 John 3:2).
All of this is from our almighty God, and nothing you can earn. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:8-9).
We are free, therefore, to rejoice in our salvation, knowing Christ Himself has secured it eternally, and set about living our stories for the glory of God.