Who is this Jesus person, anyway?
So you hear about Jesus all the time. You hear about Him in the news, on the streets, in common conversation, and even in swearing. But who is He? What can He really do for you? How can someone who lived and died 2000 years ago do anything for you now? Interesting that you should ask.
You see, Jesus made it possible for us to love and be loved by God in a close intimate way. God wants to love on us so badly, but we're pretty messed up. So what does He do? He sends someone just like Him (Himself), in human form, to experience life like we do, suffer like we do, love like we do, and then die like we do yet with out sin. He died a pretty terrible death, in fact. It's not only that He was nailed to a cross for something He didn't do. It's bigger than that. God took all the mistakes that we have done and will ever do, and placed them all on Jesus. When Jesus died, He took all the guilt and blame with Him.
But then something incredible happened. He rose from the dead. And God accepted Him and His sacrifice for us. So Jesus went to heaven to sit at God's right hand. You see, Jesus stood in our place, took the blame for all our mistakes and died horribly for it. By living a perfect life of obedience, He could stand in our place and take the consequence for all our sins. By shedding His blood, dying in our place and rising from the dead, Jesus made it possible for us to go directly to God when we need anything. We don't need rituals anymore, or rules, or rites. We need to believe Jesus lived and died for us so that we could be restored and reconciled with God. That's it.
Jesus is the only one who can save us. Because we are all sinners, we want what we want, how we want it, when we want it. It's all about us. In the end, the desire to only seek pleasure for ourselves gets us nowhere but lonely, frustrated, and unfulfilled. Jesus' plan for us is that we turn away from our natural ways of thinking and acting, and instead, make it all about Him. This is repentance, which simply means to change your heart and mind and to turn around. When we understand our need of a savior, we are motivated to humble ourselves and ask Jesus to save us.
In the Bible, Romans 10:9 says "if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved." Paul, the apostle, wrote this to the people living in Rome, but the words came from God. Just open your heart to believe in Jesus and then say it out loud to God and to your friends. It is that easy. It is not something we earn through doing good deeds but by believing in our hearts (faith) that we receive forgiveness for our sins and are made clean before God by the death of Christ Jesus on the cross for us.
Before salvation, we kept practicing sin. But after salvation, we begin to practice righteousness. Our purpose now is to follow Jesus. He never asked people to "accept" Him. It is amazing that He accepts us! He did, however, command men to "follow" Him. As we follow Him, He knows we will fail sometimes, but He forgives us and we keep on going. We will still sin, but it should not be our choice to sin anymore. His forgiveness, grace and mercy are wonderful!
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved." —John 3:16-17
Sojourners Simple Church is a fellowship of individuals that desire to know Jesus more and to follow Him. We want to live out Jesus’ instruction to “go” out into all the world to share and to be the ‘good news’….”making disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you;” This way of life is an adventure! It’s not to say that it is always fun or easy, but we have the promise of Jesus that He will never leave us or forsake us. And we also have the fellowship of each other along the way.
If you want to talk to someone more about this, if you have more questions and really want to talk to a real person about it instead of reading about it, you can go to our house church links page and call anyone on that list. They will be thrilled to talk to you!
