God loved us and provided a Way...
Two thousand years ago a man was born to the human race in a lowly stable in what is now the West Bank of Israel.
That man was unusual. He was God incarnate, God in flesh, God with us: Jesus Christ or Emmanuel.
Jesus made it deliberately clear He was Jehovah God in flesh.
God the Father showed us Himself, in Spirit, through the person of Jesus to bring us back into a close relationship with Him.
Why, then, did Jesus have to die on the cross? Why not just let bygones with man be bygones?
God has eternal character traits of
justice and righteous perfection as well as of love.
His justice and righteousness distinguish good from evil.
God is good. And He doesn't turn a blind eye to evil and tolerate it.
So if man pursues choices which go against God's world of what is right,
God views this sin as wayward or rebellious against His ways of goodness and love.
The problem with God's standard of absolute holiness is no man then qualifies as being perfectly acceptable to God.
And God's character of justice and righteous can't tolerate even a small amount of evil.
Rather, He must cast evil away from Himself, away from His holiness and perfection.
In other words, evil is punished sooner or later by being eternally severed from God's source of life.
God's plan of salvation through Jesus is a simple, beautiful and elegant plan
which satisfies God's justice and righteousness in punishing evil.
Jesus - being fully God as well as fully man - is designated as man's mediator to reconcile wayward man to God.
Jesus spiritually took our sin upon Himself when He was crucified on the cross.
Our sin spiritually transferred onto Jesus and was punished on the cross instead of us.
This once and for all punishment of sin on the cross satisfied God's righteousness and justice by casting down evil.
God's plan of salvation through Jesus is even more simple, beautiful and elegant
in that the plan satisfies God's justice and righteousness in rewarding perfection with Paradise.
Jesus led a perfect life for God, Jesus never sinned.
As a result, God the Father raised Jesus from the dead on Easter morning.
Jesus is now living again with the Father in Paradise, in Heaven.
This resurrection of Jesus satisfied God's righteousness and justice in rewarding perfection with Paradise.
So Jesus had to die on the cross to satisfy God's justice and righteousness with respect to both evil and good.
Jesus also had to die on the cross because of God's love for mankind.
Jesus, designated as man's mediator, allows man two things.
Jesus allows each man's sin to be put on - imputed on - Himself and thus punished on the cross.
Jesus also allows His own perfection to be put on - imputed on - each man who has faith in Him.
So the child of God who has faith in Jesus also rises from past dead ways.
Through faith in Christ a believer is literally "born again" into a second, new life.
The first birth being out of the womb. The second birth springing up from the vital Spirit of God.
The old dark history of a person is placed on the cross, forever forgiven by God, and
the light of Christ's perfection now shines via the Spirit in the believer's life.
God's Spirit - Christ's Spirit - lives inside the believer.
This miracle of "born again" spiritual transformation is the greatest miracle event on earth.
There is nothing weird or embarrassing about being "born again".
Rather, the miraculous transformation is a story of God's love, power and grace.
