Christianity Clichés ~ Part 1 ~ "Jesus Saves"

~Here's an overview of what I'm attempting to do here with this blog series.~

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved." - John 3:16-17 

"Jesus Saves"

 The foundation of the Christian doctrine.  The pillar of the New Testament.  This is what I see most quoted among my Christian peers, pasted on to email signatures and bumper stickers and t-shirts, which is very good...  However, some Christians seem to only go that far.  They tell you "Jesus Saves!" but they don't answer the following questions.  Why does He save?  How does He save?  And why do we even need saving in the first place? 

A Brief Explanation and Exploration of Free Will and Human Nature

For most of my life I did not understand free will.  In the back of my mind I always wondered why evil was in the world, why God didn't just create "good beings."  Free will is something I feel is glanced over by most Christians today, not fully explained, and maybe not even fully understood.  Yet free will is quite simple, and it is the basis of everything we know and feel in the world today.  Free will is the beginning of "Jesus Saves."

C. S. Lewis, in his book Mere Christianity, explains it eloquently:

God created things which had free will.  That means creatures which can go either wrong or right.  Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong; I cannot.  If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad.  And free will is what has made evil possible.  Why, then, did God give them free will?  Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.  A world of automata - of creatures that worked like machines - would hardly be worth creating.  The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures in the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water.  And for that they must be free.

In the beginning God created Adam and Eve in their proper states - in a direct, personal, and unveiled relationship with Him.  If you have ever wondered why God didn't just make "good beings"... well, He did.  But He also made free beings.  A free thing must be free to be good or bad, to go right or wrong, or it isn't free at all. 

In the Garden of Eden there was the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  If God created the pre-sin world, why did he create the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?  It was Adam and Eve's free will.  It was their possibility of going wrong, and as harsh as it seems, it was necessary.  God did not want clockwork people.  Adam and Eve could have never had the full joy of God otherwise. 

So, when Adam and Eve were tempted into eating the Forbidden Fruit they unlocked in themselves their own sinful human nature (which is the inclination to do wrong), thus separating them and their future descendants from God.  Adam and Eve exercised free will and disobeyed God, which caused humans to be veiled from God.  It gave them the need to be forgiven, to be "saved."

A Life, A Death, A Resurrection - A Savior

Enter Jesus.  He came as God in a human body, tempted and tried but never sinning.  Out of every person in the world, he, of course, was the absolute least deserving of death and total separation of God, yet that was what happened.
God, being a Perfect Existence, cannot be in the presence of sin.  As fallen humans, in our sullied state of human nature, can in no way can ever be in the presence of God, no matter how hard we try to resist our free will.  So God sent His Son to live a perfect, blameless life, but after it all He made Jesus suffer on a cross, suffer pain none of us will ever be able to imagine and total spiritual separation.  Why?   Timothy Keller, in his book The Reason For God, puts it like this:

"Why did Jesus have to die?  Couldn't God just forgive us?"  This is what many ask, but... we see that no one "just" forgives, if the evil is serious.  Forgiveness means bearing the cost instead of making the wrongdoer do it, so you can reach out in love to seek your enemy's renewal and change.  Forgiveness means absorbing the debt of the sin yourself.  Everyone who forgives great evil goes through a death into resurrection, and experiences nails, blood, sweat, and tears.  

We are sinners.  We are unforgivable.  The human nature inside us makes an uncrossable gulf between us and God.  But God forgives.  God sent Jesus.  Jesus absorbed (or perhaps the better word is "bore") our sin - all of our sin, yours, mine, the world's, future and past - and suffered in death.  But sin, being only a product of free will, has no power over God.  God raised Jesus from the dead, and, in essence, defeated human nature and, it could be said, free will.  We, in all our humanness, made an unbridgeable divide between ourselves and God that no human devices can span, but Jesus "saved us."  He made a Divine Bridge out of the cross, one that he allows all people to come over to True Love and heaven.  

"For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit." - 1 Peter 3:18

Closing Words 

 How do we get saved?  Well, Derek Prince in his book The Spirit Filled Believer's Handbook says it plainly:

Let me now state... [the] basic facts of the gospel and response which each person is required to make.

1. Christ was delivered by God the Father to the punishment of death on account of our sins.
2. Christ was buried.
3. God raised Him from the dead on the third day. 
4. Righteousness is received from God through believing these facts.

If you have read this far and have not made a personal, direct commitment to Christ as your Lord and Savior I urge you to do it now.  Jesus saves, but you must reach out and take His Saving Grace.  He's standing right beside you, gently guiding you toward His Love and His Mercy.  Sometimes, even if someone claims to be a Christian, they do not fully understand the simplicity of the act of salvation.  They get so caught up in "being saved" they forget to reach out and take the saving.  

Have you believed the facts stated above?  Have you made a direct and personal response in your own life?  If not, I ask you to do it now.  Pray with me, these words: 

Lord Jesus Christ, I believe that You died for my sins; that

You were buried; that You rose again on the third day.

I  now repent of my sins and come to You for mercy and

forgiveness.

By faith in Your promise, I receive You personally as my 

Savior and confess You as my Lord.

Come into my heart, give me eternal life and make a child of God.

Amen! 

^(OvO)^

          

 

Reflections for the End of the World

Everyone knows about the Mayan prediction of end of world, etc, etc, but of course no one really believes it.  There is, however, that little voice that whispers, "What if?"
I've noticed lately, in a lot of radio-pop songs, they feature lines such as, "Live like you're dying," and, "Party like we've got one night left."  It seems like our culture is bombarding us with these messages to party now and forget the consequences. And with this prediction, and that little voice, I find myself examining my life like, "Is this the note I want everything to end on?"
Thinking that is useless, because the answer will always be a big fat resounding, "NO!"  We will never be happy with our lives, up 'til the very end, and when we realize that things get easier.  Humans have always reached for the unattainable goal of being "happy" in life, and you can never be happy when you're searching to be happy, because being happy is almost an illusion.  There is just to much sadness in this fallen world.
To slip in a Doctor Who quote, "The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things, the good things don't always soften the bad things, but vice versa the bad things don't necessarily spoil the good things or make them unimportant."  You will have good days, but you'll have just as many bad days, and it's separating them that's the key.
To "live like you're dying" is wrong, it just leads to dissatisfaction and unfulfillment, and in truth we can't live like we're dying because we aren't dying.
We have to live like we're living.
The surest way to be unhappy is to go looking for happiness.  Accept the bad days, enjoy the good days, live for God, serve others, and happiness should follow.
Another thing I find myself is thinking, "Did I make a big enough difference?  Did I matter?"
The answer, really, depends on your definition of "mattering."  Because, in the scope of all things human, we don't really matter at all.  Even someone like Socrates, someone who's been remembered for generations and shaped human history (if that can be considered "mattering") will one day be entirely forgotten.
On our own, we don't matter, we're just small and helpless and clinging onto the skin of this tiny little world.
The way I see it, there are two levels of mattering: the earthly level and the heavenly level.  Earthly levels is your day to day life "matterings" - you matter to your parents, to your friends, to the people you help and guide through life.  Then there is the heavenly level of mattering - everyone you've directly or indirectly brought to knowledge and Saving Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Of course, this is the only way you'll truly mattering, and it's the most wonderful way to matter.
So don't worry about mattering on an earthly level, worry about mattering on that heavenly level, and that's the only way you'll ever feel fulfilled.
The world could end on December 21st, the world could end any day really, but most likely it won't end for a long while yet.  But still, don't beat around the bush, stop looking for happiness, stop trying to matter materialistically, and start telling people a very good piece of news.
The news that one man died for the sins of all mankind.

^(OvO)^