For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.
And although you were previously alienated and hostile in attitude, engaged in evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His body of flesh through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach—if indeed you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast, and not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you have heard, which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven
—Colossians 1:19-23
The Cross Which Gives Hope
When God created the heavens and the Earth, He made everything perfect. A world without pain, suffering, or death. Tragically, Adam and Eve chose to disobey God and sin against Him by eating the fruit they were told not to eat. Sin is disobedience to God’s commands, and this disobedient act plunged them, and all of humanity, into sin. Because of sin, we now live with sickness, death, suffering, and evil in our now-fallen world. Life will not be perfect for any of us because of sin.
This presents us with a problem. All of us are like Adam; we have chosen to disobey God many times to fulfill our own desires. As it is written, “All of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23). Sin is a big deal. It is very serious. In fact, the ultimate consequence for sinning against a holy God is death. “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23) This is not just a physical kind of death, but a spiritual one too—where we would be separated from God for all of eternity in a place called hell.
Despite our disobedience, God loves us and wants us to be reconciled to Him. “…in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them…” (2 Corinthians 5:19). We cannot save ourselves from our sin, so God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to pay the price for sin. It is written “…the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 55:6b) Jesus Christ came as a man, lived a perfect sinless life, and died on the cross for all our sin. In fact, “for our sake He [God] made Him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him [Jesus] we could become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Did you catch that? God loved us so much that He sent His Son, who was made to be sin even though He knew no sin, so we could be made into the righteousness of God!
On the third day, Jesus rose from the dead! This confirms that Jesus has indeed paid for all our sin. It is because of this that we can confidently boast “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1).
One day, God will re-create a new heaven and a new Earth without the consequences of sin. We will no longer live in a fallen world with sickness, pain, suffering, or death! This world will be perfect. But in order for you to be a part of this new world, you need to be perfect. None of us are perfect. You need to be made perfect. This is why we need a Savior.
Because of Jesus Christ, we can have our sins forgiven and be perfected so we can spend all of eternity with our God who created us. “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.” (Psalm 32:1-2)
But, for us to receive this free gift of grace, we have to choose to accept it. It is written “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.” (Romans 10:9-10).
The belief part happens in our heart and the confessing part is a physical demonstration of the belief happening inside. The physical demonstration should result in repentance.
We have to believe in Jesus’ sinless birth, perfect life, death, burial and resurrection to be saved. Believing these things mean more than just mentally acknowledging them, but believing in a way that produces action on our part. For example, if I truly believed there was a bomb 100 feet away from me about to blow up in 5 minutes, I would scramble and flee the scene as quickly as possible!
Genuine belief will produce something called repentance. Repentance means to “turn away”. Repentance occurs when I acknowledge my sin for what it is, and I turn away from it. For example, I know to murder is a sinful thing (Exodus 20:13), and Jesus defines murder to include when I am angry against someone and I call them a fool (Matthew 5:21-26), so I will choose to turn away from these actions and stop doing these things. The action of repentance will make me choose to go and make peace with the person who I was angry with, because I hate the sins God hates and love the righteous acts He loves.
To believe means I need to put my trust in Christ, only. For we are saved by faith alone, through grace alone, in Christ alone.
Faith means to believe with the predominate idea of trust (or confidence) in Jesus Christ.
Grace means to receive a gift that we do not deserve. In this case, we received the gift of Jesus dying for our sins even while we were enemies with God.
And we are saved only by Jesus Christ. There is no other way. “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’” (John 14:6)
So what are you going to do? You have a choice to make. Choose Jesus Christ. It is worth everything to be reconciled to your Creator and made perfect in His love. Repent, and believe!
The choice is yours.
“Seek the Lord while He may be found;
call upon Him while He is near;
let the wicked forsake his way,
and the unrighteous man his thoughts;
let him return to the Lord,
that He may have compassion on him,
and to our God,
for He will abundantly pardon.”
—Isaiah 55:6-7
