| 
'For the better'
Here is how I see the Bible copied from what I wrote I another thread:
I think before we can fully understand what Jesus did on the cross; we need to look at how mankind came to need a saviour in the first place.
When God created Adam and Eve, he created them in his image and gave us an ability to fully experience a loving relationship with him. But for love to be able to be fully experienced you have to be free to choose whom to love and also be free from any intervention that would cause you not to be free to choose.
God gave them a choice to obey him (a sign that they chose to love him) or disobey him (a sign they chose not to love him). He placed the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden. That was the only tree in the whole garden they could not eat from. This tree represented that choice. They, as we know, choose to call God a liar by eating the fruit from the tree after the snake (satan) convinced them that they were not going to die.
This has been ridiculed by many because God said they would 'surely die' if they ate the fruit. Well they ate it and didnt die.
But 5 things did happen when they ate the fruit.
1. They saw they were naked and ashamed of the way God had made them and covered themselves. The good self image they had of themselves died.
2. They were suddenly afraid of God and hid. There relationship with God died.
3. They blamed each other and they blamed God. A social alienation occurred (a death of unity between one another).
4. Their work in the fields was now going to be hard work. No longer was the ground going to yield an easy harvest. Child birth for the woman was going to be hard work. Work was not going to be enjoyable any more. A death to fulfilment at work.
5. Adam and Eve are now going to die.
Can you think of any more comprehensive death than this? It happens at every level.
We all know and experience these 5 things in our own lives.
Things get worse because God gives us his law. The law was not to make bad people good but to show sinful people how dead they really were. The law can control our external behaviour but it does nothing to our hearts where sin starts.
Man had to make atonement for his sin by sacrificing animals. This was only ever a temporary atonement for sin. It had to be done every year.
Jesus came as the supreme sacrifice, a once and for all atonement for sin. How was he able to do this?
1. Jesus was born from a virgin in whom the Holy Spirit had placed the seed. He was fully God and fully man. He felt pain and was tempted in the same ways as we are.
2. He was perfect. He led a sinless life. God says in the Bible that the price of sin is death. Because Jesus did not sin he was not going to die. He was the only person who could truly say I choose to die, thus he was the only person qualified to pay the price for all of mans sins past, present and future. We cannot say I choose not to die. It is an inevitability that we are going to die. We deserved death for our sins but Jesus took our sin and paid the ultimate price for them by dying on the cross.
Some say Jesus was just a good moral teacher but if that is all he was, he was horribly over engineered. He was perfect. None of us could ever hope to be perfect without Jesus. Jesus didnt come to make bad people good, He came to make dead people live again!
How do we respond to Jesus?
1. Recognize that we need help (confess that we are sinners in need of a saviour).
2. Believe in your heart that He is the son of God and that He has paid the full price for your sins.
3. Confess this with your mouth.
This is just a very brief explanation as to what Jesus did on the cross for us. If you need more elaboration just ask
""What we do in life echoes in eternity" Maximus"
|
