There are parts of the Bible that are so hard to understand, you can spend your life wrestling with them and still not be sure. There are other parts that require a lot of work to understand, but if you have a passion for it, you can figure it out. Then there are other parts that are so obvious there's no excuse for not understanding them.
Thankfully, the most important things are easy and obvious. I'm going to explain, in the simplest terms I can, what I take to be the basic message of the Bible and why it's relevant to you. This is all in summary, so I'm not going to quote scripture.
There is one God whose name is Yahweh. In Hebrew, it looks like this:
He is the creator and ruler of the cosmos and everything in it. He is a being on which everything else depends, and he's at the top of all authoritative heirarchies. He is a being of absolute perfection. He is all knowing, all powerful, and wholly good.
God imposes moral obligations on all of mankind. There is a real difference between right and wrong. This difference is rooted in God's character and is made manifest in his commands and requirements. He cares how we live our lives. His moral will is revealed in the Bible, but it's also revealed in our own consciences. We all possess an innate sense of right and wrong even if we are sometimes mistaken about the details.
Every one of us violates our moral obligations. Not one of us is morally perfect.
God holds people accountable for how they live their lives. There will be a day of judgment in which we all have to give an account of ourselves to God. We all have to answer to him. God will judge people for everything they said or did, whether good or bad. There will be punishment for the bad things we said or did, and there will be rewards for the good things we said or did.
Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, aka the Christ. That means he is an anointed king. Originally, the messiah was thought to be the fulfilment of a promise God made to king David that his dynasty would last forever, and so there would always be a man to sit on the throne of Israel. But Jesus is not only king of Israel; he is king of the whole cosmos. As Christians put it, he is King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
God is three persons--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There is one being, but that one being is tri-personal. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct persons, but they share the same divine essence. In other words, they are the same being. Jesus is the Son of the Father, which makes him the Son of God. But he is also God.
Although Jesus was God, he humbled himself by taking on the nature of humanity. He was born into the world through a human woman named Mary. He came into the world, not only to reveal God's will through his teachings, but to save people who cannot save themselves. It was out of love and a desire to glorify himself through the demonstration of his mercy that Jesus came into the world. Although Jesus was just as human as the rest of us, he lived a sinless life in perfect obedience to the Father. He is the only human to have ever done so.
Jesus died to atone for our wrong-doing. God is not just a harsh inflexible ruler who is out to get us. Since he is wholly good, his character consists both of justice and of mercy. None of us are morally perfect, and we all stand to face judgment for our moral imperfections, but God has provided a means of obtaining a pardon through Jesus. Jesus paid the penalty we deserve by willingly dying by crucifixion, and his death is sufficient to cover our moral imperfections.
After dying for our sins, Jesus rose physically from the dead. He did not rise back to a normal mortal life. Rather, he rose to immortality. Although it was a physical resurrection, it was also a transformed physicality. His resurrection vindicated his claim that he was the Messiah and that he was sent by God the Father. His resurrection vindicated everything he taught about himself, his kingship, and his mission to save people through his death.
Jesus' death on the cross saves to the uttermost all of those who put their trust in him. If you confess that Jesus is king, and you trust that he died for your sins, you will have eternal life. You will not be judged for your moral failures. You will be pardoned. God will treat you as if you had the same righteousness that Jesus himself had. You will, in a sense, be clothed in the righteousness of Jesus. And just as Jesus was raised to immortality, you too will be raised to immortality. Once you have been raised to immoratlity, you will no longer suffer any pain, sickness, or death.
Once the resurrection and judgment have taken place, those who have put their trust in Jesus will forever bask in the glory of God. We will be able to behold him in a way that we are not able to see him now. We get a glimpse of who God is through reading the scriptures and learning about Jesus, but in eternity, we will come to know him more fully and directly. God will make his dwelling with mankind. We will be able to learn about and appreciate all his glorious attributes, including his love, kindness, power, and every conceivable good thing. We will be forever happy. We will experience love to its fullest extent.
This is the gospel--the good news about what God did to save sinners. People who embrace the gospel (i.e. put their trust in Jesus) do so not only out of self-interest, but out of a love for their creator. To love God is to want to be the kind of people he requires us to be. So it is impossible to honestly embrace the gospel without also wanting to be better people. Primarily, God wants us to love people, and we love people through how we treat them. This includes not only our family and friends, but even people who dislike us or even hate us. We are to love our enemies, remembering that before we knew Jesus, we were enemies of God, and he loved us anyway.
Once we have put our trust in Jesus, we have crossed over from eternal death to eternal life. There is a sense in which we have become new people. God gives us the Holy Spirit as a deposit guaranteeing what is to come. The Holy Spirit dwells in us for the rest of our lives. His indwelling manifests itself in a desire to please God. The result is a life long process of deeper understanding and moral improvement. We will never reach moral perfection in our mortal lifetime, but the desire to be part of God's kingdom will drive us to positive character development.
The indwelling of the Holy Spirit will also give us a hunger for God, to learn about him through reading and studying the scriptures. This desire to be part of the kingdom of God will also manifest itself in a desire to be in communion with our fellow citizens of heaven, i.e. other Christians. Christians gather together in churches to worship God and to learn about him. We strengthen each other throguh mutual edification. We are all gifted in different ways for our mutual benefit. Some are gifted in teaching, some are gifted in helping, some are gifted in encouragement. The Bible lists various ways people are gifted for the sake of mutual benefit, but I suspect it is not exhaustive in listing these gifts. Just by being at church, worshipping together with like-minded people, you encourage those people, strengthen their confidence, given them a sense of belonging, etc. They, in turn, do the same for you.
So I encourage you to put your trust in Jesus. Jesus is God, but that did not stop him from becoming a man and enduring the same things all humans have to endure a result of living in this world. He did so out of love, to save his people. We all have to die, but Jesus came into the world when he didn't have to, and he did so for the purpose of dying so that we might have eternal life. Having defeated death by rising from the dead, Jesus sat at the right hand of the Father and became King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He is a King worthy of honor, respect, gratitude, love, and worship. I encourage you to loves, serve, and trust in the one true King--Jesus.
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