Chapter 3
Jesus
Who is this Jesus and what does He
mean to us? What does He have to do with our destiny? What if He hadn’t come?
Could we still live the Christian life?
Jesus is the Son of God. He came to
earth to show us the way to live a perfect life and then die on the cross to
pay the penalty for our sins. Without Him, we would have no destiny that was
good. Our destiny would have been eternal separation from God. We could never
live the Christian life without Him.
The Father had a plan for our
destiny. He sent the Son to prepare the way for us to fulfill our destiny. The
Holy Spirit helps us to accomplish the destiny the Father had planned for us.
What His death accomplished:
Propitiation for our sins:
1 John 2:2
2 and
He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also
for those of the whole world.
1 John 4:10
10 In
this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to
be the propitiation for our sins.
What does this big word,
propitiation, mean? The people living during the Old Testament days believed
that their gods had to be appeased. Something had to be done by the people to
get their gods to change their minds about doing something nasty to the people.
So, they sacrificed something … sometimes even their own children. This they
hoped would cause their gods to look down with favor upon them.
In the Tabernacle, the mercy seat
upon the ark was also known as the Propitiatory. When the High Priest sprinkled
blood on the mercy seat once a year, God propitiated … changed His mind … about
what He wanted to do to the children of Israel. In fact in the Septuagint, in
certain places where The King James says that God repented, the Greek word is
the one used for propitiated.
We deserved to be condemned to
eternal separation from God. He wanted to wipe us out. Something had to be done
to get Him to change His mind. That something was for His only begotten Son to
die in our place. It wasn’t good enough to sacrifice a sinful individual. The
Sacrificial Lamb had to have lived a sinless life. When Jesus died on the
cross, God’s justice was appeased and He propitiated … changed His mind … about
what He wanted to do to us.
Our destiny was the Lake of Fire
If you could hear God speak to you, I believe this is what
He would say:
"My
Son died for you. He took your place. It should have been you, My children, who
died; but He desired to take your place … to be your sacrifice to bring you
into My presence. It is not for you to question why, but to enjoy the benefits
He obtained for you. He did it all that you might have life everlasting. It was
not His desire that you have to suffer like He did. He felt that it was better
for Him to suffer once for all rather than all having to suffer as He did.”
32. Jesus died on the
cross for my sins so that God would change His mind about what I deserved.
Instead of death I might have eternal life.
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