The Greatest Love 

    Have you ever wondered, “Just what is the purpose of life?  Why were we given life, especially when life in general sometimes seems far too difficult to actually live?”  If it seems hard to us, think about those in most other countries around the world where it is simply a struggle to find something to eat on any given day.  Why be given life if it is plain miserable to live?  What’s the point in all of this?   

    It’s hard to comprehend and understand the reasons why God would let our world be such a difficult place to live.  It didn’t start out that way however.  It was perfect and beautiful.  It was a place that a perfect God created for His perfect children.  Yet, these children chose, on their own and through their own lusts, to disobey God and bring sinfulness upon mankind – the future generations of their very own children.  God’s perfect world began to disintegrate from that point forward.  Just as the world physically began deteriorating, mankind physically began deteriorating.  Diseases, immoral behavior and all manner of emotional and psychological disorders, as well as death itself, were caused by the sin of mankind.   

    Since mankind, itself, basically made this world a difficult place to live in by committing sin in the first place, how then can we ask the questions “Why is God allowing pain, suffering and hardships?” or “Why doesn’t God just step in and put a stop to it?”  Well, He did that once with the great flood.  He said that He will do that again someday, not with water but by fire.  God is not “allowing” this world to be like this.  The Bible answers these questions by saying that He is merely waiting as long as possible or as long as He can stand it so that as many people as possible will turn to Him before He steps in and stops it.  He is waiting, not out of some sadistic need to see us suffer, but out of His great love for His children – you and I and everyone else on earth.  He is enduring our misbehavior only because He is giving us time to repent and turn to Him.  How much time would you give your own children to turn from their evil ways and repent, especially if you knew that by stepping in and stopping it, many of them would die in Hell that might otherwise have repented if you had just waited a while longer.  It would be a horrible decision to have to make.  Yet, He will have to make that decision someday. 

    When God steps in, people will die.  It won’t be just the evil and suffering in this world that God will abolish.  It will be all those who have not turned to Him and repented of their sins claiming Jesus as their savior.  They will all die in Hell because God’s tolerance for sin is zero.  One sin in an unsaved person’s life produces a sentence of death.  There is no jail time.  There is no probation.  There is no type of community service that we can perform to rid of ourselves of our sin charges.  It’s actually the perfect correctional system.  If you sin, you die – in Hell in this case.  You see, life never actually ends.  God created us as “eternal” beings capable of complete “free will.”  We have the ability to choose whether or not to sin.  We all have engrained within us the knowledge of what is right and wrong.  We can choose to do either.  However, God also knew that people could not live an entire life without sinning.  It’s hard enough to go one day without it.  We are sinners plain and simple.  We all have been sentenced to death and Hell as a punishment for committing those sins.  So if we are all sentenced to die or actually live eternally in Hell, what’s the point in living or ever having been created? 

    God knew us personally and individually even before He ever created our world.  He knew that if He created men and women the world would someday end up like this.  He knew that people with free will would sin and ultimately suffer and die as a consequence.  Yet, out of His great love for you and me, He chose to go forward with our creation.  God also knew that He Himself would one day suffer over the consequences of our creation.  He knew, even before He created us, that He would one day need to send His own son, Jesus, to suffer and die for our sins so that we could ultimately live forever with Him in Heaven. How does that work?   

    Since every sin comes with a penalty of death, we ourselves have no way of paying for them – other than to die and then live in Hell.  The only way to escape it would be for someone to step in and say, “I want to take the punishment for him/her.”  Yet, no person on earth can do that because there is no one who is completely sinless.  Therefore, there is no person qualified to take someone else’s punishment for them.  Since every person is a sinner, every one already needs to pay for their own sins by death and Hell.  They can’t pay for someone else’s too.  It would take someone who has never sinned.  This person would have to have a completely clean sin record in order for him to actually take on and pay for another person’s sin.  There has never been a man or woman who has lived a perfect life without sinning.  The only perfect being in existence is God Himself.   

    Jesus, being God and being perfect in every way, knew that giving His life would be the only recourse for saving mankind.  He knew that He would one day be sent by the Holy Father down to earth to be born as a man and to live a spotless, sinless life.  He knew that He would be sentenced as an innocent man to die on a cross.  He could have said that we were not worth it.  Don’t create these people.  But He didn’t.  He looked down through the ages and saw us individually and loved us enough to choose “yes” to our creation.  Out of that great love He chose to suffer and die a most painful and hideous death.  It wasn’t just the physical pain and buy provigil suffering that He endured.  It was something far worse.  As He hung on that cross, somehow supernaturally and miraculously, every single sin of mankind, every sin that you and I have ever committed and ever will commit was laid on His person.  They became His sins to die for.  Jesus was consumed so much by our sin that the Father in Heaven actually turned His back to His Son.  Jesus cried out the pain of that revelation.  He knows by personal experience what it feels like for every sinner who dies without having first turned to God in repentance.  He knows how it feels to have God turn away from them in death and to feel the fear that comes with knowing that they no longer have a chance to repent and to know that Hell is their destination – period – no more chances. 

    Yet, being the Son of God and without true blemish, Satan was defeated in His endeavor to cast Jesus forever into Hell.  Jesus suffered and died for our sins but He Himself was not a sinner.  God reached down and raised Him from the grave and brought Him to Heaven to reign with Him forever at His side.  By that act, we know without a doubt that God will raise those who have chosen Christ as their savior from the dead to live with Him in Heaven.  

    God sent His son to fulfill this great mission in order for us to escape death and Hell.  That is why He is waiting so patiently.  He wants as many as possible to choose Christ Jesus as their Savior before He steps in to declare judgment upon mankind.  There is already a final court date set.  He calls it The Great White Throne Judgment.  At that final court hearing it will be a very somber and heartbreaking place for those who denied or never knew Christ.  The Book of Life will be opened and all those who do not have their names written in it will be sentenced to death and Hell.  The Bible says that all these people will actually bow on their knees admitting that they were sinners and declare that Jesus is Lord.  They will know that they deserve their punishment.  They will understand that they were wrong and that they should have chosen Christ but there will be nothing that they can say or do to change the situation.  They will feel the helplessness and hopelessness of their situation.  They will be sent to Hell to pay for their own sins by suffering bodily forever in the Lake of Fire.  There will be nothing that will ever quench the flames that will forever burn and yet not consume their very beings. 

    Yet, those who had previously chosen in this life to accept Jesus’ own payment for their sins will never participate in that court hearing.  Jesus will step in between them and the Almighty Father declaring that they are innocent, that their sins have already been paid for by death.  He will declare that they don’t have to die for their sins because He Himself has already done that for them.  Their debts have been paid in full and their records are clean.  Praise the Father, praise the Son and praise the Holy Spirit that lives in each and every one of us that has chosen to accept Christ Jesus’ payment for our sins.  

    He is not a God who enjoys seeing all the suffering that we experience in this world.  He is a God who has done everything possible even to the extent of sending His own son to die for us in order that we would one day live with Him in eternity.  He is patiently waiting, but not forever, so that many will have the chance to repent.  He will one day clean up the world but at a great price of many lives.  His own heart breaks for all those that die and will die at that time without knowing Jesus as their Savior.  

    I believe that our greatest mission as followers of Christ is to be ambassadors for Him.  We are a part of His coming Kingdom and He wants us to spread the good news.  What’s that?  Well the best news that a person can receive is that they have been pardoned of their crime of sin and that they have been declared innocent, not by anything that they have done but because someone has actually chosen to take their punishment for them.  We need to love people enough to tell them that fact.  We need to not be embarrassed to declare this fact to those around us.  We need to stand up and be bold, even in the face of ridicule.  We need to Show People - How to Live Forever.

Your Decision to Receive Christ as Your Savior:

Confess to God that you are a sinner.  Believe that the Lord Jesus Christ died for your sins on the cross and was raised for your justification.  Receive and Confess Him as your personal Savior.   

Assurance As a Believer:

That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved (Romans 10:9).

© 2010 G. R. Workman 

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