Is there an
answer?
Yes
there is! - and God has provided it. The central
message of the Bible is summed up in these
words: 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.
We saw earlier
that a just and holy God must punish sin. But
the Bible also tells us that God is love.
While God
hates sin he loves sinners and longs to forgive
them. But how can a sinner be justly pardoned
when God's law demands his spiritual and
physical death? Only God could solve that
problem, and he did so in the person of Jesus
Christ.
The Father has sent his Son to be the Saviour of
the world.
God the Son became a man by
taking upon himself human nature. Although Jesus
became fully man, he remained fully God: the
Bible says that in Christ all the fullness of
the Deity lives in bodily form. He remained
as completely God as if he had not become man;
he became as completely man as if he were not
God. Jesus Christ is therefore unique and the
Bible confirms this in many ways. His conception
was unique; he had no human father but was
conceived in a virgin's womb by the miraculous
power of the Holy Spirit. His words were unique:
people were amazed at his teaching, because
his message had authority. His miracles were
unique: he went about healing every sickness
and disease among the people, and on several
occasions even raised the dead. His character
was unique: he was tempted in every way just
as we are - yet was without sin so that God
the Father could say of him, 'This is my Son,
whom I love; with him I am well pleased.'
Notice that last sentence! This means that as a
man Jesus kept the law of God in every part and
therefore was not subject to sin's double death
penalty. Yet he was arrested on a trumped-up
charge, sentenced on false evidence, and
eventually crucified at Jerusalem. But his death
was not a 'freak' or an unavoidable accident. It
was all part of God's set purpose and
foreknowledge. The Father sent the Son for
the very purpose of paying sin's death penalty,
and Jesus willingly came. In his own words, the
purpose of his coming into the world was to
give his life as a ransom for many. His
death, like his life, was unique.
This makes it vital that you understand what
happened when Jesus died, and what his death can
mean to you.
All words in italic type (other than book
titles) are quotations from the Bible
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