You have experienced it. Someone who should have loved you, who should have protected you, who should have befriended you, didn’t. They put themselves, their wants, their lust, their greed first. And they didn’t care that they hurt you. They didn’t even think about you at all.
You were belittled. You were ridiculed. You were shunned. You were violated. You were abused.
You live with the pain of rejection and the memory of unspeakable physical violation every day.
You know it was wrong, and you want justice. You don’t need a philosophy class or a religion to tell you that.
You know that something is terribly wrong with the world - that this is not the way things should be. There really is good, but there also really is evil in the world. Justice needs to be done.
Do you want to know something? Your intuition is telling you the truth. And the Bible agrees with you.
The harm that others have done to you is what the Bible calls “sin.” Sin is any act, word, or thought that violates the goodness of God. It is a standard that we all pretty much recognize. We all know it is wrong to lie, to steal, cheat on a loved one, and harm others. We surely know it when it’s done to us.
But there is another problem.
If you and I are honest with ourselves, we know that we have also put our wants, our lust, and our greed first, and we have hurt others. We all have sinned. We console ourselves that we have not done as was done to us. The degree of our harms are less, perhaps. But we know that won’t do to absolve us. Even our careless words, for example, can have devastating results.
There really is something wrong with the world. And it’s us. We are what is wrong with the world. We, too, deserve justice.
The Bible says that, “the wages of sin is death.”1 That is more bad news. None of us will get out of here alive. Death will come to each of us, one day. Justice must be done. We all deserve death. We all deserve eternal separation from all that is good. That’s Hell.
But there is good news. Very good news.
God, who created you, loves you. You are His handiwork. He hates the hurt and destruction that sin caused you, because He loves you. He also hates the hurt and destruction that your sin caused, because he loves others. So He made a plan.2
God sent His one and only Son into the world so that He, Jesus Christ, could receive the punishment that we deserve. When Jesus was about 33 years old, Roman soliders crucified Him. They made a cross of wood and nailed his hands and his feet to it. As they set it upright, and Jesus hung between heaven and earth, he suffered an agony almost too terrible to comprehend as He was slowly dying. That’s when God emptied His wrath, His just hatred of sin, onto Jesus Christ. Jesus, the perfect, sinLESS Son of God, took the punishment from God that you and I deserve for our sins, when He was crucified. 3
That is how much He loves you.
Jesus did not stay dead. Three days after He was buried He rose from the grave and, after appearing to many people who knew and loved Him, He ascended back into heaven before their eyes. 4
And now God offers every person forgiveness of sin and eternal life through Jesus Christ. He can do this justly because He sacrificed Himself for you. Justice was done at the cross. You and I deserved death. Jesus Christ died for us. All we need to do is to believe. “ If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.” Romans 10:9,10
Believing that Christ died for you, that He took on Himself the punishment from God that you deserve, changes your eternal destiny. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16 You become a child of God. “…to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” John 1:12
Believing in Christ Jesus will not erase the memory of your past, but it will revolutionize your future! And you can live with confidence knowing that your future is secure. That when you pass through death, you will pass into life - eternal life with the God who loves you! Jesus Himself said, “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.” John 5:24
Friend, I hope that you will choose today to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. If you make that decision, I would love to know about it. I would love to walk with you as you begin the rest of your life as a child of God! Won’t you please let me know in the comments, or by a direct message? Thank you!
Romans 6:23 “…for the wages of sin is death…”
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Romans 5:8 “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
1 Corinthians 15:3 “…Christ died for our sins..”
1 Peter 3:18 “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body…”
1 John 4:9 “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.”
Matthew 28:5-7 “The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead…”
Acts 1:3-11 “After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God… you will be my witnesses… to the ends of the earth.” After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”