Who is Jesus? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? No? Okay. Jesus is a very important guy when it comes to getting to know God, actually. Some of you may disagree but just hear me out, it'll only cost you your time that it takes for you to read this--which I'm very grateful by the way. See there's this issue, this problem that actually separates us from getting to know God--for all of us in fact....Sin. Whoooa whoaa, what the heck, Kristin! I didn't sign up to read about sin and all that now! I know but it'll be okay, really. See, I'm sinful now, before I knew God like I do now, and will be in the future before I happen to die. Unfortunately, all of us are sinful...including you. I hope I didn't just lose you...
The question that many people ask now is, "If we're all sinful, does that mean that God makes us sinful?" The answer: HECK NO. God made us to have that relationship with Him, to have a bond with Him. If sin is the bondage breaker then it wouldn't make any sense for Him to create us with built-in-sin, kind of sounds like a car huh...cupholders maybe? Keep in mind, also, that God is perfect, holy, righteous, without blemish, good, and everything that sin is not...it would be impossible for God to create sin and He did create us...thus in order to make us with a sinful nature, God would've had to create that sin too. See, sin is just disobeying God's laws by either active rebellion (willingly looking at the law and going your own way) or even through passive indifference (just not caring what it has to say). Adam is the one who kind of messed things up with humanity...I know, I know, easy to pass the blame to him for screwing us all, but put yourself in his shoes, really, not that easy. Satan is the master of deceiving people into questioning this law that's set before us. It's because of the devil that Adam even had an option to sin and disobey God's single rule of, "Don't eat the fruit from that tree."
Okay, I hope I haven't lost you to this point. Please just continue because if you don't gain anything else from this maybe you'll have a trivia question someday on this, and hey, you could become a millionaire ;)...okay maybe that's a long shot, but honestly this seems a little more interesting than some of those weird visions we get of Jesus and God from those outlandish paintings and books and what not, at least I think it is. Okay, so to recap, God loves us like whoa, He created us to be His bestest buddy and to have an amazing relationship with Him, that original relationship was broken when Adam
Before, we were able to be right next to God...now there's this annoying barrier, or line haha, that separates us from being right under God's arm. You guessed it, sin is that barrier. See God is all of those things I listed up there and He can't be around sin because He's so perfect and without blemish. Since we've been infected with this horrible disease, God just can't be near us as He wants to and used to be able to. Do you have a child? Me neither, but if you do and if you could imagine your child being infected with this terrible, horrible disease and this made it impossible for you to hold your son or daughter's hand or to kiss him or her on the forehead, wouldn't that drive you ABSOLUTELY NUTS?! You would try to find a solution to that real fast wouldn't you? So did God. It drove Him insane that He couldn't be with us anymore because of this horrible disease called sin. He loves you too much to lose you to this horrible disease. Thankfully, God is...well God. He had/has the perfect solution to rip that barrier down once and for all. God found that cure...Himself.
Because sin separates us from God, this is an eternal...think about it, ETERNAL--long time...separation because there is nothing that ever takes that barrier down. We're people and don't have that power to break sin and God is so holy and pure that He can't be near it and we're the only two parties who even care that we can't have this relationship now. As a result, God in His infinite wisdom found a loophole, if you will. See, someone has to pay the price for these sins for this disobedience because that's what happens with disobeying orders. Remember when you were a kid and you lied to your parents or you sat in the camper in the backyard even though your dad forbade you to and then you ran past him and hid in the bathroom when he found you in the camper because you were terrified of getting in trouble (yes, I actually did this)? What happened? You got in trouble or you experienced the "wrath" of your parents if you will. Well, this thing that God did for you and for me was that He decided to send His Son to take all of that punishment that we well deserved on Himself. Someone had to be punished for this and God didn't want us to experience it so He gave us another option. Yes, the Easter story.
Jesus came to this earth just so that He could die (willingly) so that you could have your relationship restored with your and my very God. That's how much God cares. That's how much you mean to Him. Every single sin that you've done, are doing, and will do laid heavy on Jesus's shoulders as He was tortured and hanging on that cross. Was that easy? HECK NO! Remember that He did have a fully human body so He felt EVERY single lash, EVERY single nail going through His flesh, the starvation, the inability to breath as He hung in that position for hours (usually suffocation is how the people actually died when crucified) all for YOU. What does this mean now?
Well, God asks one thing from you in return of Jesus's very very precious and dear gift of taking on our punishment. All He asks is that you would accept this gift from Him. Accept that you want that relationship back with God. Accept that Jesus died for you so that peace could be restored. Now you're saying, "Um dumby that's three things and you said He wanted one thing." Are those three separate things? Truly? They're all saying the same thing just in different ways.
Please don't get confused. Okay? Sin is a result of not following God's "rules" and such but that's not the way to be a Christian or to restore that relationship with God. We can't just try to be "good" people and follow as many rules as possible. That's a little absurd to even think possible if you ask me. What defines a "good" person anyways? What's good for you isn't necessarily good for me. I realize that I said that we will always be sinful while on this planet up above when speaking about myself being sinful, but it's important to say that while we're still sinful, we have a bridge around the sin through Jesus. That's how our relationship is restored. Once we accept Jesus's gift that doesn't just eradicate sin, it just extends God's hand to us so that we can have that passageway back to Him. The way to God and the way to be a Christian is to simply do what I said above, accept the gift. God will do the rest...with your help of course :)
Now I ask, who do you trust with your life, yourself or God? Do you trust that the very One who created you also wants what's best for you? Now for the challenge. I challenge you to simply say, kind of like before, "God if this stuff about Jesus is true, you know about Him dying in my place and all, then show me what that's all about. Show me why that's so important for Him to do that for me." Once again, what do you have to lose? If God does truly exist, which I'm pretty certain He does, and if this is true about Jesus, then what do you have to gain? Think about it ;)
