What's Up With This Jesus?

*The following is what I had to write in explaining the essence Gospel for the first time. Let me know what you think!

Do you know about Jesus?

As hard as it seems to understand and believe, there is a God who created everything. In creating humans, His pride and joy and in His image, God gave us free will. This means we get to choose. Just like we want our children to love us by choice, He desires us to love Him by choice. I guess I’ve always seen it as it being like the first time your child gives you a gift or present that cost them something without anyone telling them they needed to or giving them all the supplies for it. They gave it out of love. That’s what God desires of us.

The difficulty came in with the first selfish choice – against what God made as perfect. That was Adam and Eve’s (the first humans) fall. They were thrown out of Eden which was a perfect garden where they could actually walk with God and have a relationship with Him face to face. Because He is perfect, and holy – which means, set apart in that perfection – sin (which is choosing anything over God) could not be in His presence.

So they were kicked out and started living, as humans have ever since, for themselves. Here’s the amazing thing- Because God has true unconditional love for us, He didn’t just let us destroy ourselves or wipe us all out and start again. In fact, He loved us so much, he planned a way for us to still be in fellowship with Him from the very beginning! He loves us so much even when it seems difficult, and because sin had to be punished since He is Just, He had planned for His Son, Jesus – who is also fully God – to take the punishment for us since we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory He deserves. (Romans 3:23)

Throughout the Old Testament times – before 0 A.D. – God told people about this plan of His to stand in and take our place for the punishment we rightly deserve: His redemption of us. This punishment is what we call Hell, and is a separation from Him. While this doesn’t seem so bad on the outside, we just can’t truly comprehend it. It’s like claiming you don’t need a parachute and never will. It makes sense to you standing on solid ground that a parachute seems ridiculous. Imagine the first sensation you’d have though, as the solid floor under your feet drops out to reveal what you thought firm ground was only the floor of a large plane and now you are falling through the air. We need to be made right so we can be in God’s presence again: We need righteousness. This righteousness is the parachute that seems ridiculous, but is necessary for life.

So the question is, “How do we get this righteousness we need?” Well, we can’t. How can a dirty rag clean a dirty rag? We need someone who has never sinned and who doesn’t deserve to be punished, to stand in our place and take that punishment for us. That’s what God planned through His Son Jesus. It’d be like the parachute maker handing you his own and only chute right before the drop even though you laughed at him till then. That’s what Jesus did. He came to earth – born through a miracle and not the lineage of man's sin – to live on this earth for around 33 years without sinning once. Can you imagine having to put up with everyone you know laughing at, scolding, and mocking you and yet not once put yourself above God’s plan? He allowed Himself to be tortured, killed, and then took the punishment for the sins you committed. He, who had never in eternity been separated from God, allowed Himself to be forsaken by God, so that one day you might choose to love Him and desire to be in the presence of God. What's so amazing is that because He is God, Jesus was able to take the punishment for our sins and then still triumph over death: He came back to life after three days and has been alive ever since! (1 Corinthians 15:3-4)

That’s what’s so amazing! Once you accept this gift, that’s it. You are no longer condemned to be eternally separated from God in hell. There is no condemnation for you in Jesus. (Romans 8:1) Yes, we still struggle while here on this earth since we still have a fleshly body, but we desire to love Him and put Him above ourselves.(Romans 7:24-25) That is what we strive for…to the glory of God the Father. (Romans 4:20)