“The Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world” 1 John 4:14
First, I’m sorry that this is little late.
As I was reflecting on this chapter, I thought about two things
1. What would have happened if Jesus didn’t come 2000 years ago? I suppose he could have come few years later as well but what if he didn’t come to save the world yet? I would still be a gentile that has no purpose in life. I could be an atheist, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim or some other eastern religion that don’t make any sense. I would just follow along with whatever was available out there or I could have searched for reason for our existence. But given that Jews only played by themselves, would I have even come close to knowing the God that we know today, probably not. Without Christ, I would probably end up in hell somewhere with nasty stench hole, where it’s super humid, loud annoying noises and probably super hot too
2. It reminded me once again that God has delivered his one and only son to die on the cross for all sinners. For me, it took little longer to understand what it meant "one and only son to die on the cross" cuz I didn't quite understand the dept of his love until I became a father. Maybe you could relate if you own a dog or something else that you control that you really love. I would be willing to give my life but to sacrifice Nina, Caleb or Jacob for anyone is just unthinkable. Anyway, one of the key messages here is that we could be guilt free of sin easily. I shared few weeks back on one of the comments that when I first accepted Christ, it was the best experience ever. I felt completely clean for the first time in my life. This feeling that I had is something I could have every time, as long as we come to God. He's already done the work. He's delivered his one and only son to die. All we need to do is simple task of asking for His forgiveness. How awesome is that?
I just thank God for his perfect timing, his amazing grace and his great sacrifice.
thanks for the blog, il, especially for your last point.
ReplyDeleteit is so wonderful and amazing that God would ever send His Son into the world.
it is equally wonderful and amazing that Jesus would ever come of His own accord.
and how wondrous it is that God would make the way of salvation so easy, that even a child could be saved!
"to all who received Him, to all who believed in His Name, He gave the right to become children of God". (John 1:12)
receiving and believing. what could be easier than that? everyone is capable of doing that.
why then do we refuse to do that one "easy" thing?
everyone thinks they could just "will" themselves to believe whenever they want.
this is just not true. it has to be "given" to us to believe.
just try right now to "will" yourselves to believe in something you think to be false or have doubts about.
you can't do it.
that's why people who say that they will receive and believe in Christ on their death beds after a lifetime of sinning
are really deluded and fooling themselves.
God gives us the gift of faith to believe, and the eyes to see the truth . . .
so that He alone can receive all the glory.
may He give us all the heart to believe and receive the Christ . . .
that we might all become the children of God.