Why We Need Jesus
For many people, there is a defining moment; all at once they realize that God is REAL.
In that moment, they recognize His vastness and their smallness in comparison.
In that moment, they recognize His goodness and their eyes are opened to all the bad choices they've made.
And in that moment, they experience God reaching out to them, not in condemnation for those bad choices, but with open arms despite those bad choices.
God is always drawing us to Himself, but our bad choices (sin) keep us from having the relationship He wants to have with us. So He made a way for us to come to Him, clean and righteous.
Christ Jesus (God's Son) came from heaven to the earth, born as a baby. As he grew to adulthood, he lived a life completely free of sin.
And because Jesus never sinned, His relationship with God The Father was perfect.
We, on the other hand make bad choices (sin) all the time. Those choices keep us from having a right relationship with God because the punishment for sin is death (separation.)
Because He loved us so much, Jesus willingly took the punishment we deserve for our sin, He was put to death on a cross.
Here's the good news, after Christ Jesus died and was buried in a tomb, He conquered death (separation) and rose again. He spent 40 more days walking among the people, reassuring them, teaching them, preparing them and promising that a Helper (Holy Spirit) would come and would be with them always.
He also told them that the punishment He took on our behalf was a free gift and available to all who believed in Him and would enter into a relationship with Him. This gift would allow us to have a relationship with God like the one Jesus had with Him, clean and righteous.
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2 Corinthians 5:21 says, "For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God"
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John 3:16 says, "For God so loved the world, that He gave his only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life." Eternal life in this verse refers to being able to be in a relationship with God, even after we die.
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Jesus offers this free gift to you too. When you accept this gift, you are saying that you want to be a follower of Christ. In that moment, you become a new creation, you are clean and righteous before God.
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As you spend time with Him, through prayer, reading the Bible, receiving good, Biblical teaching, and being in community with other Christians, the Holy Spirit (remember the Helper) directs you, and your thoughts begin to change. You find yourself not wanting to make the bad choices you made in the past.
It's a marathon, not a sprint. We have the privilege of getting to spend the rest of our lives in this process. No one walking this Earth has achieved perfection. That's why we give each other grace, why we walk together and lift one another up when we fall. We are all learning and growing and becoming more like Christ Jesus. It's a beautiful thing to be able to be in a right relationship with a God that loves us so much!