I don't know who reads my blog, but I feel really compelled to do this, and explain the nature of our God, and why there is a need for Jesus Christ, His person and also how did He save us.
The world is drawn to a God who loves and promises goodness, because the world is a rough place and we are tender deep down, longing for care and nurture. That's why it appeals to us when we hear that there is a person called Jesus, who loves us no matter the condition of our mind, body and heart, and we take likely to Him.
Jesus had great love for all of us, if not He would not have the strength and courage to walk to the cross and be crucified.
His whole life was gearing toward His death at Golgotha.
His foreknowledge that His death would bridge God and man and triumph over sin and His love for everyone enabled Him to carry on.
When Jesus was arrested, He said:
"Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?"
Matthew 26:53-54 (New International Version)
God loves us and He cares about our suffering, our distress.
But Jesus came not to make our lives better in the worldly sense or to give us riches and prestige.
The blessings that Jesus brought and promised through Abraham, through Israel were not material wealth, but the promise of closeness and intimacy with a God who is mighty and full of love and power.
Yet our God is also Holy. God is righteous and just. He loves justice and hates iniquity.
He does not condone sin; sin is opposite to Him. God's righteous anger, God's wrath is incurred by our wickedness and our falleness. All have sinned, and there is no exclusivity.
Proverbs 17:15
"Acquiting the guilty and condemning the innoccent-the Lord detests them both."
Because of His righteousness, sin is serious to God. Sin is an offense against an infinite God, and as a result, the punishment is rightly infinite. God cannot, despite His love for us, compromise His justice and holiness and pardon us without a price.
Out of His great love, God sent His only Son, Jesus Christ to take our place and suffer God's righteous anger on the Christ. Jesus who is divinity became man and lived a perfect life as the perfect man, pure and blameless. He came and taught us by example the perfect godly man that we were designed to be, and did not turn away from His intended course-to death on the cross.
Christ Jesus is the Son of God and having infinite worth; therefore He was fully qualified to take up all the sins of the world past and future and pay it all for us. When He died for us, He paid it in full, saying "It is finished" before He gave up his life.
He died for us and He offered us a way out of our brokenness and fallenness, and a way to God. If we believe in Him, we gain life because His blood has fully washed away our sin and He has redeemed us from our death by His own death.
Isaiah 53 is very clear in telling us what was God doing through Christ. God's own arm worked salvation for Him and for us all.
Isaiah 53
Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
smitten by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before her shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
And who can speak of his descendants?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people he was stricken.
He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
and with the rich in his death,
though he had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth.
Yet it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.
After the suffering of his soul,
he will see the light of life and be satisfied ;
by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,
and he will bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,
and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.
Romans 3:23-26
"for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus."
With this, we are new creatures in Christ who have received life from the Spirit and must live by the Spirit and according to Christ's teachings in Scripture to imitate and take on the likeness of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
1 Peter 1:14-16
“As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, "You shall be holy, for I am holy."
Finally, God says in Isaiah 44:22, "I have swept away your offenses like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist. Return to me, for I have redeemed you."
We are redeemed by Christ's sacrifice for us, and His resurrection authenticates the reality of God's grace. In this we must repent, believe and trust in Christ Jesus, submit to His Lordship and walk in love, obeying His commands and teachings and to bear fruit.
We should not only have passive faith, but active faith.
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