IS JESUS RELEVANT TODAY - PART 6

                                                IS JESUS RELEVANT     TODAY?

    PART 6

    (Copied from 
      Y-Jesus.com)


What did Jesus say about Himself?

God's Perfect Solution

During His three years of Public Ministry, Jesus taught us how to live and performed many miracles, even raising the dead. But He stated that His primary mission was to save us from our sins.

Jesus proclaimed that He was the promised Messiah, who would take 
our iniquity upon Himself. The 
prophet, Isaiah had written 
about the Messiah, 700 years earlier, giving us several clues regarding His identity. But the clue most difficult to grasp was that the Messiah would be both man and God!

"For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and His Name shall be called Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."  (Isaiah 9:6)

Author Ray Stedman writes of God's 
promised Messiah:  "From the very beginning of the Old Testament, 
there is a sense of hope and expectation, like the sound of approaching footsteps. Someone 
is coming! That hope increases throughout the prophetic record, 
as prophet after prophet declares 
yet another tantalizing hint. 
Someone is coming!

The ancient prophets had foretold 
that the Messiah would become 
God's perfect sin offering, satisfying 
His justice. The perfect man would qualify to die for us. 
(Isaiah 53:6)

According to the New Testament authors, the only reason Jesus was qualified to die for the rest of us is because as God He lived a morally perfect life, and wasn't subject to 
sins judgment.

It's difficult to understand how 
Jesus' death paid for our sins. 
Perhaps a judicial analogy might 
clarify how Jesus solves the 
dilemma of God's perfect love and justice.

Imagine entering a courtroom, 
guilty of murder (you have some 
serious issues). As you approach 
the bench, you realize that the 
Judge is your father. Knowing that he loves you, you immediately begin to plead, "Dad, just let me go!"

To which he responds, "I love you, 
son, but I'm a judge, I can't just 
simply let you go." 

He is torn. Eventually he bangs the 
gavel down and declares you guilty. Justice cannot be compromised, 
at least not by a judge. But because 
he loves you, he steps down from 
the bench, takes off the robe and 
offers to pay the penalty for you. 
And, in fact, he takes your place in 
the electric chair.

This is the picture painted by the New 
Testament, God stepped down into human history in the person of Jesus Christ and went to the electric chair (read cross) instead of us, for us. Jesus is not a third-party whipping boy, taking our sins, but rather He is God Himself.
Put more bluntly, God had two choices: to judge sin in us or to assume the punishment Himself. He chose the latter.

Although U2's Bono

 doesn't pretend to be a theologian, he accurately   
states the reason 
for Jesus' death.

"The point of the death 
of Christ is that Christ took on the sins of the world, so that what we put out did not come back to us, and that our sinful nature does not reap the obvious death. That's the point, it should keep us humbled. Its not our own good works that get us through the gates of heaven."

In other words, God's perfect justice is 
completely satisfied by the death of His Son, Jesus Christ. All of our sins - no matter how bad they are or have been - are completely paid for by the blood of Christ.

Some people don't think they need a Savior, believing that God must be pleased by their lives and charitable deeds. They don't consider themselves as sinners. This is especially true 
with people who spend most of their lives trying to live  their lives according to a particular moral or religious code.


next post 25th October