The Good News

You were born with an innate knowledge of something or someone beyond yourself; that someone is God. The awesome universe displays his creative power and glory. Our moral sense reflects his moral character. Unless we have been hardened, we know that it is wrong to cheat, steal and lie and we suffer guilt when we do.

What we see from creation and conscience is that God is a God of power and justice. His is also personal. Since he is a person, we can know him personally, rather than simply knowing about him or just assuming that he is there—and he delights in this and wants us in his family.

The first chapter of the Bible says that we are all made in the image of God. An image reflects its object. We are made to reflect God through our lives and live in relationship to him.

Many people today speak of seeking or developing their spirituality. They know that there is more than the material world of the five senses. For example, no one has seen or measured love, yet we all need it and long for it. But the key to life is not our own spirituality or even being loved. The key to life is knowing God.

The bottom line for the Bible is that God is a person and therefore we can know him personally. This awesome, holy Person is love. Here is where our need for spiritual life and our longing for love are fulfilled.

The Not So Good News

We have a problem, though. We feel a dis-ease, a spiritual loneliness. We feel an emptiness inside, what John Bradshaw calls “the hole in the soul.” We feel displaced, as if we do not belong here. This shows us that there is something which stands in the way of knowing God personally and intimately. This something may come from ignorance. We simply don’t know who God is, that he loves us and that we can have a relationship with him. This something may come from confusion or even spiritual abuse. We may be confused by pictures of God from childhood—a vengeful, distant, disapproving God, a God for whom I must perform if I am to be accepted. How can I know him? Why would I even want to try? We may be confused by a loveless, legalistic, hypocritical church. “If this is what believers are, I want nothing to do with their God,” we say. (This distracts us from staying focused on the issue of knowing God.)

When we come to know that God is holy (that is, that he is just with a consistent moral character) and when we realize how we have betrayed not only that character, but our own conscience as well, never being fully true to our highest and best, we realize that we are separated from him. Here is where guilt enters in. The Bible calls this separation “sin.” Yes, sin is an old fashioned word, but it is important for us to grasp it, if we are to have the proper diagnosis of our spiritual condition. We do sinful things (letting ourselves and God down) because we are sinners and we are sinners because we have said “yes” to our selfishness and said “no” to God’s will for our lives. This is saying “no” to God. When we do this, we make ourselves God—at least in the practical sense of seeking to run our own lives and live independently of him. This selfishness is not only personal, it is generational – it goes back to the first humans who ever lived.

No wonder we are screwed up. God has made us for himself and we are living for ourselves – missing the whole point. Our separation from God, our violation of his perfect will, leads to guilt and shame. We feel bad about ourselves and we look down in embarrassment rather than looking up to him in love.

Our behavior has consequences. Since God is moral, he punishes immorality (even the most refined kinds). As the just Judge, he judges our sin and his judgment is final and clear—we must die forever in separation from him. Our crime is sin and our punishment is death.

Admitting this is not bad. It means getting out of our denial, our self-justification—which will kill us—like an addict who denies his or her addiction. If we don’t know how sick we are, we won’t go to the doctor. If we don’t know that we are separated from God, we won’t seek to be reunited with him. The fact is: we are all really sick—terminally ill with sin and self-will. But there is more to come.

The Best News

God doesn’t leave us alone to stew in our own juice. He doesn’t abandon us or simply leave us to our own well-deserved punishment. He comes for us when we are still separated from him and miserable—to take away our sin and restore us into a relationship with himself.

This is where Jesus enters the picture. Jesus is the best man (and only fully human person) who has ever lived and he shows us who God is. Better still, Jesus is God in a human body (he is part of God, but not all of God). He brings God to us, doing the following things: First, he lives a perfect life which none of us live. He breaks the chain of generational sin. Since he is perfect, he is not ever separated from God the Father. Since he is not a sinner by nature or choice, he does not stand under the divine judgment of death for sin.

Now catch this: Second, Jesus freely places himself under that judgment by dying for our sins. This is why the cross is central to Christianity. There, Jesus died for your sins and my sins. There, he took our sin of self-will and our resulting guilt and shame upon himself. He freely put himself in the place of sinners, paying the penalty for sin in his death, so that we might have that penalty lifted from us and be forgiven and restored into a living, personal relationship with God. He experienced our separation from God the Father so that we can be united to him forever. God the Father then raised him from the dead. Jesus is alive! We can know God personally through him!

It’s really simple (simple things are the most profound). Either I pay for my own sin by being punished forever (i.e. “God is moral and can’t let me off the hook without violating his holy character”) or I accept that Jesus has paid for my sin—taking the punishment I deserve on himself when he died on the cross for me. Once I accept this, I am ready to admit to God that I am a sinner and ask for his forgiveness. I must then ask Jesus to cleanse me from my sin by his blood (i.e. “The cleansing agent of his life poured out in death on my behalf”) and come through his Spirit to live in my heart.

Well, how can I experience this? How can I be restored to a personal relationship with the living God? How can I get to know God better? You might ask. Through faith—believing in Jesus and receiving him through prayer. As I turn from my sin of rejecting him, I now accept him into my life. His promise to me is that as I pray, he will come into my heart, cleanse me from all sin, restore me in my communion with God and start me into a new life by living in me by his Spirit. He will also unite me to all who know him and live with him in this world.

Would you like to pray this simple prayer from your heart to complete the transaction?

God, I come to you now in prayer. I want to know you personally. I admit that I am a sinner. I have lived my life for myself, separated from you. I turn from my sin. I ask you to forgive me for all that I have done against your will. Cleanse me by the blood of Jesus. Live in me. I receive the gift of forgiveness which I do not deserve and I give the gift of forgiveness to all who have hurt me, the gift they do not deserve. I give my life to you and submit to you as my Lord and King. Take me now as I am. I confess from this day on that I am a Christian. Fill me with your Spirit. Join me to your family. Help me to live for you. I pray this in your name, Amen.

If you prayed this prayer from your heart, I want to welcome you to the family of Christ. Please e-mail us so that we can recommend a church to you where you can grow in your new faith. God bless you. If you prayed this prayer from your heart, you have made the most important decision of your life.