| God is Almighty. He is
sovereign over the Universe, and He never changes. He is the
Creator of all things and the Judge of the whole world. He is
unique, and said: "I am God, and there is none like Me"
(Isaiah 46:9). Through His
creation we can tell a lot about God's character. For example,
we can glimpse His wisdom from its complexity and variety, His power
from its scale, and His glorious majesty from its awesome splendour.
"Great is our Lord, and of great power: His understanding is
infinite" (Psalm 147:5). A person can also discern that
they are separated from God in that He is not personally known to
them. Yet from the beauty of creation they could then surmise
that the God who fashioned it must be a beneficent God and will
therefore have made a way for mankind to reach Him.
So, God is separate from His
creation. The word 'holy' primarily means 'separate' and,
looking through the scriptures, it indeed becomes clear that God's
'overriding' character attribute is holiness.
(Remarkably, God's holiness is emphasised in Scripture far more
often than His love.) God is totally righteous and pure
and He never looks upon any sin approvingly (see Habakkuk
1:13).
God is deserving of worship and He
created the heavens and its angels as well as the world and its
people to worship Him. For worship to be meaningful it has to
be offered freely, so the angels and mankind were given the capacity
to choose; to decide whether to love their Creator or to reject Him,
to offend Him, and thus become separated from Him. He created
a particularly powerful, beautiful and clever angel to be His chief
worshipper (Ezekiel 28:13-17). This angel became proud of his
position and sought to be worshipped himself. Pride is a
transgression, or 'sin', and is deeply offensive to God.
(After all, we have nothing that we weren't given by Him, so what do
we have to be proud of?) This rebellious angel - now known as
'Satan', meaning 'adversary' - and the ones that chose to follow
him, were expelled from their place in Heaven. A place of
everlasting punishment - a lake of fire - has been prepared for them
and on the Judgment Day they will ultimately be consigned to that
place called Hell.
Satan and the other fallen angels, also called 'devils' or 'demons', now operate on the Earth.
Satan seeks to usurp God's place and lead men to worship him.
He endeavours to break God's Word and to deceive or destroy those
who worship God.
Adam and his wife eve were the first
people God put on the Earth. Through his great subtlety, Satan
was able to deceive them and Adam sinned as a result. As we
have seen, God is absolutely holy and this sin meant that
Adam and his wife deserved to be cut off from God forever. Not
only that, but such is the utter purity and holiness of God that,
because Adam's 'seed' within him was tainted, all Adam's subsequent
generations deserve the same fate regardless of how good their lives
have been (Romans 5:12-21; 1 Corinthians 15:22).
In other words: as a result of his
sin, Adam died in a spiritual sense... including his seed in him
(hence all future offspring - i.e. us - died too). Besides,
all of us have sinned in some way, rejecting our Maker, so we
all deserve to go to Hell and we can do nothing to earn a
place in Heaven. Without God providing a way, we are without
hope and are destined to eternal damnation in that place prepared
for Satan (Matthew 25:41,46; Mark 9:43-48).
Mercifully, God has made a way
and He made promises about this throughout history, as recorded in
His written revelation of Himself to man, the Bible. Until He
provided this Way, He ordained the sacrifice of spotless animals to
illustrate what He was going to do later in history. But the
price required was the death, with the shedding of the blood, of a
perfect man.
If someone could be found who was
without any sin and was prepared to pay the price; i.e. die
bloodily, for our sins then we could be saved by completely
turning away (or 'repenting') from our sinful nature and evil ways
and spiritually 'clinging' to this person. But such a man
would have to be 'begotten' (born) of God, rather than of man, in
order to avoid being stained by Adam's 'original sin'. He
would also have to live a sinless life and then sacrifice it for us.
God has a Son. This Son is the
only begotten Son of God and, as part of the Godhead, is
therefore Himself God (see Hebrews 1;8; Titus 2:13; Isaiah 40:3 c.f.
Matthew 3:1-3 etc). He is eternal and glorious like His
Father. Yet he was prepared to lay aside His fearsome majesty
and come to Earth as a man in order to pay the price for us.
Jesus Christ of Nazareth was that man.
As a man, he was born in Israel over
2000 years ago and fulfilled each one of the hundreds of prophecies
made in Scripture about His first coming. He mainly spent His
years of ministry teaching people who already believed in His Father
the truth about the Godhead and the Kingdom that His Father had
promised to His Son and to all those who were truly committed to
Him. (Religious authorities at that time had taught many
falsehoods about God, perverting the people's view of Him.
This had ruined their understanding of the gospel. Jesus
Christ needed to expose these false teachings and replace them with
the truth.)
Jesus also healed many people,
delivered many demoniacs, and performed other great miracles.
He never sinned, yet, aged just 33, He allowed the same people who
had taught falsely about His Father to arrest Him and put Him
through an illegal trial. Soldiers of the occupying Roman army
then flogged Him, which will have destroyed most of His back.
They punched Him, ripped out His beard, spat on Him, and mocked Him.
It is sobering to remember that this is God we are talking
about. He was capable of stopping this wickedness at any
moment but He was totally obedient to His Father's will.
The Lord Jesus Christ was rejected by
mankind as a whole. And with blood already flowing from much
of His body, and with His face terribly disfigured, men stripped Him
naked, nailed Him to pieces of wood and - all the while continuing
to rail at Him and mock Him - crucified Him. It was on the
cross that He prayed for His Father to forgive those people who had
caused His crucifixion - which is all of us. After several
hours hanging there being scorned, and after the sun was darkened
for a long time, He gave up His life so that even those who had
rejected Him could be saved if they 'repented' - i.e. completely
turned away from their past nature and turned toward
God - and were (spiritually) washed in His blood. That is
AMAZING grace!
At the moment of His death, several
extraordinary things happened to attest to Jesus being the Son of
God. And because He was without sin, He could not suffer the
curse of death that was on Adam. Instead, after three days and
nights in the grave, He was resurrected by the Spirit of God and
ascended into Heaven.
By confessing our sins and our fallen
nature to God, by hating these things and repenting of them, by
submitting to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, we can, by God's grace,
be washed in His blood and be 'hidden' in Him. At this moment
of starting a new life by accepting Jesus Christ as the new centre
and purpose of our life, He "abides in us" by His Spirit.
As soon as someone repents and is
saved, their spirit is reborn - they become 'born again' - because
they are reconciled to God. the Spirit of God instantly
indwells one's spirit, enabling us to understand His Word, obey His
commands, and become ever more Christ-like. This indwelling of
the Holy Spirit is not to be confused with the baptism and
gifts of the Holy Spirit which, while important for the
building up of the Church, are distinct from salvation itself.
God is coming to judge the world,
with unimaginable ferocity, for its rebellious and evil ways
(Jeremiah 10:10; Isaiah 63:3-6). But those who are faithful to
Christ when God's wrath is poured out will be safe because they are
hidden in Him (like being concealed in a cave or in the cleft of a
huge rock). To have faith in, or to "believe on", the Lord
Jesus Christ means to trust in His Deity, rely on His atoning work
and cling to His commands. Thus we are saved by His grace,
i.e. by His completely unmerited mercy, through Him.
| "I'm here ... tonight, just simply,
not to speak about myself, but to tell you about our
great Saviour ... I'd like to tell you a little about
how I was saved ... I knew deep down in my heart there
was a God, and there was a hell... [W]hat must it be to
awake and in the split moment ... realize you're in
hell?! What must it be [for a man] to learn
... that the mercy of God would never come his way again
... lost for all eternity...
"One night I went to a meeting and the man preached on
... 'His visage was more marred than any man's' and I
began to listen ... I knew the sins that I had done,
that helped nail my Saviour there ... I realised ...
what I'd become - a horrible man ... My heart was broken
... I started to realise that Jesus Christ was the Lamb
of God ... I started to realise that Christ died for the
ungodly ... I repented and I cried and I said 'Oh God
can you please forgive me? ... please ... save me' ...
It was the first time in my life I felt clean ... I have
a Saviour who is alive for evermore ... Jesus died for
me ... [I]t's great to feel free and clean. If I
die tonight ... I'll go to be with the Lord" [The
Testimony of David Boyd, given at Cambridge Avenue
in Ballymena, Northern Ireland. Tape kindly
supplied by Michael Penfold, Penfold Book and Bible
House]. |
Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask
for the old paths, where is the good way,
and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls
(Jeremiah 6:16)
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