You and God – the Reconciliation (while there’s still time)

Dear Friend,

God created the world, with all its beauty, for people like you to enjoy. He also created men and women so they could share in a loving relationship with Him.

Ever since God formed you in your mother’s womb, He has known you and everything about you. God has even counted the number of hairs on your head. He also knows when you rise and when you sit down.

Sadly, men and women turn away from Him and most deliberately choose not to know God – their loving Creator. The Bible says that the evidence of God’s eternal power and divine nature may be plainly seen in the wonders of creation. God has also given each person a conscience that speaks to them of right and wrong. Throughout your life you have suffered the results of wrong actions, both from the hands of others and by your own choices.

Although many bad things have happened to you, you are nevertheless responsible for your own actions and the choices you make as you go through life. When you have lied, stolen, cheated, or deceived others, the person you offended the most by these actions was GOD Himself. The Bible calls such actions “SIN” and all your unforgiven sin will one day be judged by God. The Bible says:”For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God”. No-one is blameless.

God hates sin because he is Holy (perfect). Sadly, your sin separates you from God and the loving relationship He seeks with you. All sin will, one day, be punished so this puts you in great danger. But the GOOD NEWS is that God is – even now – ready, willing and able to forgive your sins and remove that separation. This forgiveness by God restores the opportunity for you to have a loving relationship with God your creator. Are you prepared to turn from your present way of life, change direction and turn to God your creator for a fresh start? In doing this, God calls you to stop trusting in and relying upon everything you have, and surrender your life to Him. So your old life has to go when you take this step. However, God promises to give you His power to enable you to live a new life.

Have you heard of Jesus Christ of Nazareth? Hundreds of years before He was born into this world, many prophets wrote about His coming. These prophecies telling of Jesus’ coming are all in the Bible, a book about Him. Jesus’ coming to Earth from Heaven was according to God’s saving plan for all mankind.

Jesus Christ of Nazareth was sent by God the Father, out of love, into the world on a mission to rescue men and women. In obedience to God’s plan Jesus lived a sinless life, yet He willingly gave up His life and died on a cross to rescue you and me. By his death and resurrection three days later, Jesus broke the power of sin and death. After He rose from the dead, Jesus was seen alive again by hundreds of people.

By His death on a cross, Jesus paid the price for your sin and mine. The Bible says: “But God shows his love for us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

Jesus gave himself up as a sacrifice on our behalf by taking upon himself God’s punishment that our sins deserve. Jesus is now alive for evermore and sits at the right hand of God the Father in Heaven, in a place of glory and honour.

DO YOU WANT TO BE RESCUED?

Do you want Jesus to rescue you from your sins and your present way of life? The Bible says: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

If you cry out to Jesus to save you, He will set you free, give you eternal life and a place in God’s family. Because Jesus was sinless, yet paid the price due for your sin – in your place – you can trust in Him as your substitute and go free. So you do not have to suffer the consequences of your own sins. God is then able to help you live a new life, by His power. The Bible says: “For it is by grace you are saved, through faith, and this not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, so that none can boast”. God offers you His forgiveness as a free gift.

Jesus gives new life by His Spirit, which sets people free and brings them into God’s kingdom.

At the end of your life, Jesus will hold you alone responsible for all your unforgiven sins and you will be judged accordingly. If you choose to hold on to your sin, refusing Jesus’ free offer of forgiveness, you will bear the consequences on your own head – the wrath (anger) of God for eternity.

On the other hand, if you cry out to Jesus to forgive your sins NOW, He will do so and set you free from sin’s controlling power, He will wipe the slate clean and give you a fresh start. You can know total forgiveness of all the sins you have ever committed.

There is NO sin you have committed that Jesus cannot forgive, as He is “all-powerful” and “all-forgiving”. Jesus said: “I and the Father are one.” The sins He forgives in this life are forgiven, and forgotten, for eternity. at a crossroads in your life. Do you wish, whether you realise it or not, to remain a slave of sin? Or will you surrender your life to Jesus? Realise who this Jesus is. He is God, the one who died for you and offers you total forgiveness, peace and joy – now! The Bible says: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved”

One day all men and women will stand before Jesus, the Judge of all mankind. The Bible says: “…man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgement…”. Jesus alone has been given all power and authority in judgement by God the Father. Jesus therefore will decide where you will spend eternity. Although our human bodies eventually give out and die, our spirits live on beyond death.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DIE?

We all live on after death and the Bible makes clear that we end up in one of two places, either:

(a) a place of weeping, suffering, eternal torment and eternal separation from God for those who reject Him (Hell aka the Lake of Fire), or

(b) a place of eternal peace, love and joy (Heaven)in the presence of God, your creator.

Jesus himself said that most people walk through this life on the BROAD ROAD that leads to DESTRUCTION, rather than on the NARROW ROAD that leads to LIFE.

After this life is over your destiny is sealed based on your response to Jesus Christ in this life. So you need to respond to Jesus’ call on your life while you still have breath in your body! The Bible says: “Today is the day of salvation.”

No-one else can forgive your sin and make you right with God. Jesus truly is God’s unique gift to mankind!

How Does Anyone Get To Heaven?

Heaven is a perfect place, and only those who are perfect will make it. It’s a place of no suffering, no sin, and no evil. If God were to let in people who had less than perfect records, heaven would become as bad as earth. God would basically be saying that a little bit of evil doesn’t matter.

In this article, we’ll look closely at the “problem” God had, and the solution he came up with. We’ll also see just where good works fit in. And, we’ll see how grace makes it possible for everyone and anyone to get to heaven.

Love and Justice

God always does what’s right. He never cheats. He never falls for bribes. And He’s always concerned with justice. This means that when it comes to heaven and evil, he won’t compromise one bit. There will never be any evil in heaven.

On the other hand, God cares deeply about every person who has ever lived. He loves everyone regardless of what they have done, or not done. And He wants everyone to be in heaven. But to get to heaven, people have to be perfect: – without sin – faultless.

The Problem

So how do people with sin, get into heaven, a place without sin?

We’ve already seen that doing enough good works won’t get anyone into heaven. The only way for any of us to make it there, is if God takes away our sin. We can’t do that ourselves. But if God comes up with a plan to remove our sin, then we’re fully qualified to go to heaven. The only way that we can have our sin taken away is if it’s transferred to someone else.

If you have the debt of a house mortgage, you only become debt-free when your debt is transferred to someone else. If you pay off your home loan, you transfer your debt to the bank, and you become debt-free. If you sell your home to someone else, the proceeds of the sale enable you to pay back the money you owe to the bank. Again, you become debt-free. When your sin is transferred to someone else, you become sin-free.

The Plan

God offers us this plan: if we trust that he alone has the solution to this problem, then he will transfer our sin onto his son Jesus. Jesus is in effect a substitute in our place. Jesus qualifies for this job for three reasons:

Jesus is completely human, just like us. In any substitution, the substitute needs to be of the same kind.

Jesus is completely God. He has committed no sin of his own. Because he has no sin of his own to worry about, he can take the sin of others.

Jesus is an infinite Person. This is important, because it means he can have the sin of any number of people transferred onto him. If you had never sinned, you would still only be able to substitute for one other person. But Jesus can substitute for everyone.

All God asks is that we accept that no amount of good works can ever get us into heaven. If we come to that point, then we can accept his offer to transfer our sin to Jesus. Once our sin is transferred to Him, our standing before God is “sin-free”. It’s a legal transfer. God declares that legally, we are in right standing before him. There is no longer anything preventing us from getting to heaven.

Grace?

This double-transfer is free to us, and without any conditions. Our sin is taken away. Jesus’ good standing before God is transferred to us. We give this transfer the name grace. Grace is when we get something good that we don’t deserve. Grace is not a wage, or the result of us doing any kind of works. If that were the case, grace would no longer be grace!

No, grace is the completely undeserved good favour from God. God offers grace to everyone and anyone. Grace is what makes Christianity different from any other spiritual path. All other spiritual paths require us to do something to earn our way to heaven. God requires us to simply accept his solution, and trust in him alone.

What About Good Works?  

Good works are still an important part of Christianity, but as we’ve seen, they will never get us a ticket to heaven. Good works should stem from a person’s thankfulness to God. If we were in jail, and someone paid the bail to release us, we would be grateful! We would realise that nothing we had done contributed to our release. But, no doubt we would want to show our appreciation to that person in any way we could.

Good works are simply our way of showing our appreciation to God. God is concerned about justice in the world, about the poor, the homeless, the hungry, orphans, and those who cannot defend themselves. When we take on His concerns, we show that we want to join with God in addressing his concerns.

The following true story shows how God cares about both justice and love:

One day during the Great Depression, police hauled a frightened old man before the magistrate in a New York City night court. They charged him with petty larceny; he was starving and had stolen a loaf of bread. By coincidence, the mayor himself, Fiorello LaGuardia, was presiding over the court that night. LaGuardia sometimes sat in for judges as a way of keeping close to the citizens of the city.

LaGuardia fined the old man $10. “The law is the law, and cannot be broken” the mayor pointed out. At the same time, he took a $10 bill out of his own pocket, and told the man he would pay the fine for him. Then LaGuardia turned to the others in the courtroom and “cited” each of them for living in a city that did not reach out and help its poor and elderly, tempting them unduly to steal. The mayor fined everyone in the audience 50c each, passed around his famous fedora to collect the fines, and turned over its contents to the amazed defendant. The hat contained almost $50. The old man left the courtroom with tears in his eyes.

Author: Rupert Lineage

Letter To a Friend Who Attends Church And Believes He Is Going To Heaven

Hi,

I just wanted to clarify about our chat on Wednesday.

I wasn’t attempting to judge you by what I was saying.  As we are both well past the proverbial three score and ten (70 years of age), I was only expressing concern as to whether you were going to exit in the right direction (Heaven) when your time does come. Let’s face it, for either of us that could be any day!

Think of it in terms of a little friendly loving concern, which is what it was intended to be. If I put it across badly, please accept my apologies. I’m a work in progress!

Photo by Tobias Bju00f8rkli on Pexels.com

Imagine I was out walking on a foggy night, and you saw me near where you knew there was a 500 foot drop over a cliff edge.  I am sure you would want to make every effort possible to warn me of the potential danger I was in, wouldn’t you?  Similarly, if there is ANY possibility that you could be heading in a dangerous direction spiritually, you likewise would surely want me to make every effort I can to let you know dangers to avoid, based on my own experience and what I’ve learned through that.  If you had terminal cancer and I had discovered a cure for cancer, would you thank me if I kept silent and you were denied the benefit?  Eternity is even more important, since our personal outcome lasts for ever.

From my own personal experience I know that a person can attend church every week, hold an office as Church Elder and be a Sunday School teacher and yet not be a Christian pursuing a personal relationship with God, as was my situation some years back. Had I died at that time I would most certainly have gone down and not up.  My Christian life was merely an outward sham, with no interest in the spiritual life of a Christian, nor did I pray or open a Bible at home from one week to the next – perhaps a clue to my non-Christian state that I somehow missed!  I had no experiential knowledge of God (as opposed to head knowledge) nor was I interested in submitting to a personal relationship with God either. I was boss of my life and that suited me fine.

The Chief Priests and Pharisees in Jesus time were experts in the scriptures. They tithed faithfully their 10 per cent, fasted twice a week and observed scrupulously every commandment as they saw it. Nevertheless they were blind to recognising Jesus as God in their midst. If church commitment, intellect and obedience to God’s commands were the standard, then they were heading for heaven, effectively home and dry. Except, as we know, they weren’t. They were proud and refused to repent, both at the teaching of John the Baptist and then Jesus.  In fact Jesus pointed out to them that Satan was effectively their Lord, not His Father in heaven.  They weren’t best pleased! So scrupulous, regular and sincere religious observance clearly doesn’t get you over the line into heaven.

On the other hand, the disciples Jesus chose were quite the opposite of the Priests and Pharisees who referred to them as “ignorant and unlearned men!”  I guess Jesus chose them because he saw  they were open and honest men, with teachable hearts. As Jesus said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”  Little children have simple trust in Daddy, that Daddy knows best and that what Daddy promises he will fulfil.

In the gospels, we read that that Jesus “breathed on the disciples” and said “receive the Holy Spirit.  Subsequently, on the Day of Pentecost, the disciples were again filled with the Holy Spirit. Paul’s letters in the New Testament exhort us to “go on being filled with the Spirit” (the tense in the original Greek is present continuous, so not just a once only event)).  Without the Holy Spirit within, we are “running on empty” since the unregenerate human heart and spirit cannot please God.

  You recall I said “think of how we are all born, live and die using this example of two buses”.  We are all born on Bus Number 1. That bus is going to Hell and Satan is the driver. If we spend our life on Bus 1 and never change, we die in our sins and end up in Hell. We therefore need to change buses. The way to do this is to repent of our sins to Jesus Christ. That allows us to change to Bus Number 2, headed to Heaven and driven by Jesus. Both the Pharisees and myself were on Bus No 1 (being driven to hell), and were totally unaware that Bus No 2 even existed. Likewise I didn’t know I had to disembark and climb aboard Bus Number 2, driven by Jesus. As you know, it’s rather difficult to get off one bus and on to another without knowing it. It’s a conscious choice.

The key to changing buses is recognising the need within ourselves for personal repentance. Repentance is a fundamental change of thinking and direction as regards our propensity for sin. Without the indwelling Holy Spirit – who comes in when we truly repent – we cannot change our sin nature. Asking for forgiveness does not change us on the inside the way true repentance does.  Jesus didn’t preach “Ask for forgiveness”. His cry from the outset was “Repent of your sins!”, Repentance equates to “open heart surgery” compared to the “bandage/sticking plaster” of forgiveness.

Forgiveness doesn’t change the human heart towards God, it merely applies a temporary covering that constantly needs replacing. Forgiveness has its place, but not as a substitute for the heart surgery we all need, to change our love of our own way to love of God’s way as our number one priority in life.  This begs the question: “do we want God as the number one priority in our life, before self and even family?” God reminds us in the Book of Revelation: “Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline, so be earnest and repent”.  God has spoken to me a few times over the years about me getting back on track with my life. That’s part of His love relationship with us.

In summary, I’ve learned that being a Christian is not about regular church attendance and church service, and what goes with it, since if it’s only that it doesn’t change your heart towards God. The Bible says we are by nature rebels towards God, and only repentance can change that. In my case I literally got down on my knees and repented for having been Lord of my own life instead of handing that over to Jesus. As God says through Jeremiah in the Bible: “Cursed is the man who trusts in his own strength… ..  God goes on to say a couple of verses later: “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord.……..”  You could liken the curse and the blessing  to a hell or heaven consequence.

Repentance brings about a love relationship in your heart with the heart of God. That’s why the First Commandment commands us to: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength.”  That’s impossible for unregenerate human flesh to even attempt, since our flesh nature is at war with God. In my case there was no relationship, not even of the cerebral kind.  I had no idea I had to humble myself before God, despite the Bible saying “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble”.  According to the First Commandment, if God is not the number one priority in our lives, then there is something wrong with our heart attitude towards Him.

Because I’m a slow learner, after realising that I was lost spiritually, it took me about a year of searching spiritual things. I then repented of going my own way and gave over my life to trust in Jesus for the future.  Effectively, I gave him control of the steering wheel of my life, and have never regretted it.

But God is a perfect gentleman and never compels us to do anything, which is why He gave us free will. So choosing him as Lord is all about our free will choice.  Someone once said: “Hell is populated by people singing the Frank Sinatra song: “I Did It MY Way”, which just about sums up our natural desire to live without Jesus interfering in how we live.

I hope the foregoing has helped to put my side of the conversation into the context it was meant to be in – a concerned and loving enquiry with your eternal future in mind. Who am I to judge anyway?

I remember someone pointing out that in John Bunyan’s book “Pilgrim’s Progress” there was a pathway leading off to hell right next to the entrance door to Heaven. So none of us are safe till we’re over the threshold! All the more reason to encourage one another on the journey.

I know there’s a lot to digest here, but feel free to come back to me on anything you like on this topic in due course.