God loves you. He treasures you. You may not think He does — maybe someone has told you He doesn’t. Maybe your life makes it seems like He hasn’t. Or maybe that He couldn’t. But He does. No matter who or what you are. No matter what you’ve done. God loves you. How does He love you?
Jesus said, “For God loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.” And Jesus knew what He was talking about, because He is that Son that God gave for you. Whoever said that we needed God to give His Son for us? We didn’t ask Him to. But, He did it because of the constant struggle we have with sin. Sin begins in our hearts — and it includes things like hating people, hurting people and not loving God. Everyone struggles with it. Everyone. The Bible says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” And because we sin, we can’t be close to God.
The answer for our struggle with sin is Jesus. That little baby boy we celebrate at Christmas was equal in glory and power with God — but he left all that and came to earth and wore diapers and had to learn to walk and read, Just like us. He grew up, lived the only perfect life that had ever been lived, and then paid the ultimate price for sin — yours and mine —- by dying on the cross. It sounds horrible, doesn’t it? But He did it because He loves us — you and me. “For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring you to God.” He paid the price for us, and it never has to be paid again — so that we can be close to God!
But it gets even better than that. Jesus was buried, and three days later He rose from the dead. He beat death! Without Jesus, death always wins. But with Jesus, we can win over death, too. We can live forever with God. So what’s the catch? Surely there’s something that we have to do? Of course there is.
It’s in the Bible: “If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” Confessing is agreeing with God that you need Jesus. Believing is trusting that Jesus did die for you and rose from the dead. To be saved means to be clean, to be whole, to be free. We can tell you that this works, because Jesus cleansed each of us, made us whole, and freed us. Every one of us.
All we did was tell God that we needed Jesus and ask Him to forgive us for our sin. We believed that Jesus loved us enough to die for us, and we turned our lives over to Him. None of us is perfect, but we try to live each day for the One who loved us that much. Jesus loves you. And we love you so much that we just had to tell you about Jesus. We wanted you to know. We’d love to talk more about all of this. You can talk right to God. But if you would like to talk to one of us, please call 504.482.5775, ext 126 or email inward@fbno.org.