Jesus Died For You And Me - True Or False

Jesus died for you and me– True or False?

Well, today is Good Friday, the day that we remember Christ’s death on the cross. Have you ever stopped to wonder about this contradiction in terms. You would normally only associate celebration or happiness with the death of someone bad or evil. But here we associate it with the death of Jesus – a good man, a great man, the Son of God. And the reason why we say it is good is that we claim that He died for us.

This morning, I want to quickly consider Jesus’ death and ask the question – Jesus died for you and me – True or False? For many of you, what I am going to talk about this morning is very familiar. To you who are comfortable with this information, I want to challenge you about what you are doing about it. If you know that Jesus died for all people on the planet, when was the last time you shared this good news with others. Listen and be encouraged. Listen and get excited. Listen and learn how you can answer this question to your friends. Jesus died for you and me – True or False.

This is the last in a series of messages where we looked at 3 questions. If you would like a video of these previous messages, see me after the service and I can arrange them for you.

The first question was - Jesus is God’s Son – True or False? All the evidence we examined showed us that Jesus was no ordinary man and that He was who He said He was – God’s Son. If that is the case, He comes with some authority on the matter of God.

The second question that we looked at last Sunday night was – Jesus is the only way to God. We discovered that God chose to reveal himself to us through his Son. Therefore, the information we get about God and the way to God through Jesus is far superior to that obtained through any other means. Other religions rely on people’s perceptions about God, but Jesus is God’s revelation of himself. If you want to know about God and what God says, look at and listen to Jesus. And on the topic of finding God, Jesus says in John 14:6-7 … “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” Jesus claims to be the only way to get to God. Why? Because only he can deal with our sin problem.

We talked last Sunday night about the huge problem we have. God is perfect which means there is nothing wrong in his character, actions or thoughts. He is flawless. His home, heaven, is also perfect. Unfortunately we are not perfect. I don’t have to tell you that we all do things which are wrong. We all lie, cheat, lose our temper, say mean things about others. We all are jealous at some times and put ourselves before others. These things are what the Bible calls sin and sin stains us. Because we are stained and not perfect, God can’t have a relationship with us. He can’t accept us in our current state and can’t let us into heaven to live with Him because if He did, heaven would no longer be perfect. It is like this bag I’ve got here. Draw out the spotted handkerchief from inside the bag. God is like this bag, he is perfect. He is spotless. There is nothing wrong with Him. But we are not like that. We are like this handkerchief. We have spots all over us. We are sinful and the two can’t go together.

Our situation is like this great big chasm. We are on one side with all our sin and imperfection. God is on the other side standing in all his glory and perfection. There is only 2 ways to get across the chasm and be accepted by God. 1) live a perfect life. For us that is impossible, Rom 3:23 says “We all have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God.” I like how the Living Bible puts it … “Yes, all have sinned; all fall short of God’s glorious ideal”. You know this, I know this and God knows it. So because we all have sinned, we can not live a perfect life. Even if we were to live a perfect life from here on – all the remaining day’s of our life, the things that we have already done give us an imperfect record. All other religions at their heart are based on trying to do enough good things to impress God and make us acceptable to Him. But we can never be perfect and so this is doomed to failure. Any attempt to rely on good things done will end up in failure at the bottom of the chasm.