Why we need a savior
I grew up in a small country church. All of us were either family or friends who were so close that we may as well been family. We loved the Lord and we loved each other. I couldn’t have asked for a church family who loved the Lord more. They taught me, by how they lived, what it means to be a Christian.
I was never asked to “join the church” – to become a Christian. That was simply the expectation. You dressed up in your Sunday best because you were going to worship your savior. That’s the way I was raised. I’ve always loved Jesus and I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t want to serve Him.
My Mom and Dad made sure we went to Sunday school, where the teacher would take the quarterly and read the lesson for the day. I thoroughly enjoyed that. I would always read the lessons and the scriptures a head of time.
But you know something? No one ever explained to me why I needed Jesus as my lord and savior. Honestly, I can’t remember my Mom or my Dad telling me either. We were a Christian family and we loved Jesus. Maybe that’s all that mattered. Trust me. I am not complaining.
I knew that Jesus died for my sins and if I accepted Him as my personal lord and savior, I would go to heaven. But have you ever wondered why Jesus had to die for you in the first place? Did you do something wrong?
We’re going to see from scripture, very briefly – just enough to whet your appetite – why we need what Jesus is offering.
What was God’s original plan?
From the very beginning God wanted a family. In Genesis 1:26 God says “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness ...” Ten powerful words. God originally made man to be exactly like Him. God gave man His DNA. Simply, that is what the word “image” means. And the “likeness” – we look like our Father! Let the magnitude of that sink in.
God also says in verse 26: “... and let them have dominion ...” Man was to rule in creation in the same way God rules in heaven. I hope you see this – I mean really see this.In verse 27 the Bible says “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” The word “image” is used three times in two verses. God is driving home the point that man had His DNA, His image, His life. All that He is, man was, except deity. Man had a beginning. God did not.
In verse 28 we read “And God blessed them (male and female) and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion ...” After giving man His DNA – His image, His life – God says reproduce yourself. God wanted a family and He essentially told man “Make it happen!”
From these three verses we see God’s original plan for the husband and wife, the male and female: produce a race of people with His DNA, who would rule in His creation just like He rules in Heaven.
Adam changed God’s original plan.
God put Adam “in the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it” (Genesis 2:15, 16) and gave him one commandment: “... Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; (Genesis 2:16b, 17a).Why the prohibition? “... for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”(Genesis 17b) Adam understood the concept of death. God, His father, had explained it to him in great depth. He loved Adam too much not to.
But Adam was hard-headed.
In Genesis 3 we see Adam disobeying His Father because of what he saw. For Adam, what he saw disagreed with the truth that God had spoken. Adam believed what he saw and not the word he had received from God. (I’m being redundant to drive the point home.)
Adam watched as Eve bit into the fruit and didn’t die. Get the picture. He didn’t try to stop his wife – who was “bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh” – as she committed spiritual suicide. He watched her do it! And then he committed spiritual suicide too. What does that tell us?
Adam didn’t believe that what God had said was really true.
That sounds so much like many in the Body of Christ today. We have the Bible, which was spoken by God (2 Timothy 3:16) and given to men to record (2 Peter 1:21). But we don’t treat God’s Word to us as if it really came from God. We don’t treat the Bible as if it’s really true. We don’t treat the Bible as if it is life. Tragic.
When Adam ate, he died just like God said he would. “But Bro. Barry,” you say, “he didn’t die. He lived to be 930 years old. It’s right there in Genesis.” Oh, but he did die, my friend. What died the moment Adam’s teeth pierced the skin of the fruit was God’s DNA, God’s image, God’s life. Adam was now spiritually dead. Put another way: Adam was a dead man walking.
Adam’s human spirit no longer had incorruptibility as its nature. It was now corrupted with a nature of sin. In other words, God was no longer Adam’s father by nature. Satan was now his father by nature and so is every person born into this world.
Adam’s rebellion is the reason we need Jesus.
Every one of us were born into this world with a sin nature and a one-way ticket to the lake of fire – just like Satan. (Thank you Adam. Not really!) We didn’t have a choice but Adam did. Romans 5:12, 18a and 19a confirms this.“Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: ... Therefore as by the offense of one (Adam) judgment came upon all men to condemnation ... For as by one man’s disobedience (Adam) many were made sinners ...”
Adam’s disobedience made us sinners. Committing sin does not make us sinners. We sin because that is who we are and our nature enjoys it. (This is the one time when all of us can say “I was born this way.”)
We were scheduled for eternal damnation but in Romans 5:18b and 19b Jesus gave us a chance – a one-time opportunity – to “opt out” of an eternity in the lake of fire. “... even so by the righteousness of one (Jesus Christ) the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. ... so by the obedience of one (Jesus Christ) shall many be made righteous.”
However, there is one catch in all of this: you must choose to opt out. If you don’t, it won’t matter how good a life you’ve lived, or how many good deeds you’ve done, or how many charities you’ve supported. You will spend an eternity separated from Jesus.
Sin no longer has dominion over you.
That’s why Romans 10:9 says “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” When we say “Yes” to Jesus, we are saved from the lake of fire and an eternity with Satan (Revelation 20:10, 15).
Now that you are born again, you no longer have a nature that links you to Satan. “Therefore if any man be in Christ (born again), he is a new creature: old things (the sin nature) are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)
Redeemed! (Oh, how I love to proclaim it!)
Jesus has redeemed us from a life of darkness. He paid the price necessary to secure our freedom. But we must accept it because without doing so, the death sentence, an eternity in the lake of fire, will be carried out. I thank God that Jesus paid the price, death by crucifixion, to release me – to let the condemned go free. “Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold ... But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot ...” (I Peter 1:18, 19)
One way to think about our redemption is someone going to redeem S & H green stamps. Do you remember those? Here’s the example that I read years ago with some minor changes and additions.
For years you sat lifelessly on the shelf of the Devil’s redemption center. For a while the priests came in each year with their bull stamps
and goat stamps, but all they could do was get you temporarily off the shelf – never out the door. As long as you had a sin nature, you were just like Satan and remained his legal property. And there was nothing you could do about it.
Then one glorious day, Jesus Christ came to the Devil’s redemption center and kicked the door off its hinges. He marched in and looked around the center at every one of us. He looks at Satan and then points to each of us, one by one, and leans in placing his hands on the counter: “How much?” Satan smiles and says, “Your life,” knowing that the price was outrageous. Jesus smiles back and without hesitation says “Write it up!”
Jesus knew something Satan didn’t – His Father would raise him from the dead and, by that time, we will have already walked out the door! We are no longer Satan’s cheap thermos. We are now God’s chosen vessel! “What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price ...” (1 Corinthians 6:19, 20)
Nothing is more valuable to God than you, His child.Jesus, God’s only begotten Son, was the only price that could satisfy the purchase requirement for our freedom from a life where darkness never ends.
Only from His Word will you see how precious you are to your Heavenly Father. And only from His Word will you begin to build His image of you in the eyes of your own heart.
