Why do we intrinsically long for happy endings and the triumph of good over evil? Why do we love stories where a gallant rescuer saves those who can’t save themselves? Why is sacrifice the ultimate heroism? From Robin Hood to Captain America, why do we all love a hero?
Even in our messed-up world, we’re born knowing there’s more to the story than what we see around us. There has to be more. We were made for more.
So let’s go back to the beginning—chapter 1 of the story of humanity.
God created you to share his life. To have a relationship with him, to glorify him, to find all your deepest fulfillment in him.
The world he created was a beautiful place of harmony and creativity and light and joy. The first man and woman were at peace with God, with each other, and with themselves.
But the first man and woman wanted to be like God—to be their own gods—and they deliberately disobeyed the one command God had given them. This rebellion (sin) separated our first parents from their Creator. No more fellowship. No more peace with him or with each other. Ever since then, every person in the world has been born with the desire to do their own thing and disobey God.
God is perfect—perfect love, perfect justice, everything we’re not. His perfect love mourned at what happened to his creation when sin came on the scene. Death and destruction became part of our world. Work became a struggle, childbirth became painful, conflict entered relationships, and even the ground was cursed with thorns and weeds. These constant reminders show us that something is desperately wrong with our world and with us.
Because of sin, God gave us his law, his “rules for life,” to keep us from hurting ourselves and each other, to show us how serious sin really is, and to prove to us that even our best efforts still fall short of his perfection. He gave his commandments verbally and in writing to his chosen nation of Israel, but his laws are also written on the heart of each person, whether Jew (Israelite) or Gentile (non-Israelite). This is how we inherently know that murder is wrong or that it’s wrong to take what belongs to someone else.
The problem is that because of our rebellious nature and the sin we inherited from our first parents, we are unable to keep God’s law perfectly. Not only that, we know there’s a God, we know what we’re doing is wrong, and we choose to go ahead and do it anyway.
Although God’s perfect love mourns for us, his perfect justice demands a penalty for our rebellion. Overlooking our sin is not an option. We all know the bad guys shouldn’t get away with it. Except in this story, we’re all the bad guys.
You probably don’t have to think very long to come up with something you’ve done that you shouldn’t have. Maybe it doesn’t seem so bad compared to other people, but other people aren’t the measuring stick. God is.
Unless you are as perfect as he is, you are separated from him, cut off from his life. The penalty for sin is death. And that death includes eternal separation from God in unimaginable suffering after this life is over.
So God promised a redeemer. A deliverer. A hero who would step into our world and save us from the awful effects of sin and the justice we deserve.
God himself became a man.
That man was Jesus Christ, the Son of God and fully both God and man. Two thousand years ago, Jesus entered our world and became a man just like us—but without sin.
He willingly took the place of every human being who ever has or will be born and died an excruciating death by crucifixion to take the punishment you deserve. He was perfect, but he took on all your rebellion and sin and paid for it with his own blood.
He died in your place, satisfying his own justice. If you break a law and go to court, the judge cannot truly be just if he simply lets you go free. There must be some payment for what you have done. But if the judge himself pays your penalty, the law is satisfied and you can go free.
But the story doesn’t end there. Christ’s friends buried him in a borrowed tomb, but after three days and three nights, he came back to life by his own power and the power of God his Father. Over 500 witnesses saw him at one time, and he appeared to many others before ascending back to heaven.
Christ’s resurrection ensured that you could share his life again and be restored to fellowship with him, with his perfect righteousness credited to your account and his Spirit living within you.
Jesus Christ is alive in heaven today and will return someday to judge everyone, living and dead, who has broken God’s law.
Good works won’t change your final score in that judgment—doing a good deed can’t change the fact that you’ve violated God’s commandments.
But he doesn’t want you to experience his condemnation, even though we all deserve it.
You can’t do anything on your own to get this new life and salvation, any more than a dead man could make himself alive again. No amount of good you do could ever measure up to the perfect glory of God. There is only one way to access this renewed fellowship and perfect righteousness: faith.
When you get in your car and assume it will get you to your destination, that’s faith. When you go to bed believing the sun will come up in the morning, that’s faith. When you sit in a chair and expect it to hold you up, that’s faith. Faith is simply relying on something or someone to do what it has either promised to do or always done in the past. Faith isn’t blind; it’s a response to evidence or a promise.
God has promised to forgive the sin of anyone who relies on Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection to reconcile them to God. He has promised to put his own righteousness on anyone who trusts his promise. And he has done it for everyone who has ever accepted his promise by faith.
When you accept this by faith, God’s life becomes your life. His Spirit will live in you, leading you to become more like Jesus until someday, after you die or after he returns, you’ll live in his presence forever. Because your sin has been paid for, you are no longer under the condemnation of the law. Rules and good works aren’t what makes you acceptable to God; only the blood of Christ does that. God sees you as a new creation and wants you to live that out each and every day through the power he gives.
Not only does Christ’s resurrection ensure that you can have new life (both spiritual life with God now and eternal life with him in heaven), this also means that Jesus Christ is alive in heaven today and is interceding (petitioning on behalf of) everyone who trusts in him.
Because he became a man, he knows every temptation we face and can support us and help us in our struggles.
Will you believe Jesus died for your sins and was raised from the dead to make you right with God? Will you rely on his blood as the payment for everything you’ve ever done against him?
This means admitting that you can’t save yourself and trusting in his death and resurrection to save you. Simply believe this in your heart and tell him you believe.
God’s written instructions, the Bible, explain all of this and much more.
Reading the Bible, especially the books of John and Romans, will help you understand this “best story ever” in much greater detail.
He has made a way to be rescued from sin and death. Will you trust your rescuer?