What About Jesus?
Part 5: Why Do We Need Jesus?
We’ve seen that Jesus is God and there were prophecies about His coming to Earth, but why did God have to become a man? To answer this question one must go back to the Garden of Eden. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate the forbidden fruit, they sinned. They had a change of character and became sinners. Every human has inherited genes from Adam and Eve and, unfortunately, all humans inherit the characteristic of being sinners, too. “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.” (Romans 5:12) No one chooses their genes but we all live with what our parents passed to us. Similarly, all humans are born sinners, we have no choice in the matter. (After you are born you can choose what types of sin you get into, but you cannot choose not to be born a sinner.)
The problem is that sin separates us from God and keeps us out of Heaven when we die. “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23) Sin has a penalty, that is death—not just physical, but spiritual as well. You’ve heard of Hell, that where all sinners are destined to spend eternity and experience spiritual death. But God offers eternal life…
The good news is that God doesn’t want anyone to go to Hell. “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” (II Peter 3:9) God wants all humans to repent (turn from sin) so that no one would perish. This is where Jesus enters the picture. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16). Jesus came to pay the penalty for your sin and mine. No human could pay the penalty for another’s sin, because we all have to die to pay for our own sin. If there were a person without sin, he could pay the penalty for someone else, so that person could go to Heaven. Since Jesus is God, He had no sin. When He became a human, He was still without sin. Jesus was the only one who could die in our place, as a substitute for our sin.
Since Jesus paid the penalty for our sin, God is able to offer us eternal life that we did not earn, “the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Since it is a gift, all we have to do is receive it. How do we receive this gift?
The Bible tells us, “that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” (Romans 10:9-10) It is very simple.
.... 1) Confess you are a sinner and need a Savior from death
.... 2) Believe, that Jesus is Lord (God), that He died for your sin, and was raised from the dead
.... 3) Ask Jesus to forgive your sins and apply His death in your place
That’s all it takes to have your sin forgiven, gain a new life, and begin a relationship with the Lord.
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