The God who created the world knows and loves you. From the beginning of time God created mankind so that we may be in relationship with him. And you are no exception. God wants to have relationship with you.
Why? Because of his unending love for you. He knew you before you knew yourself. He is a loving father who sees past our mess and our mistakes because he has gifted us unearned and undeserved grace, that we receive by putting our faith in Jesus. For because Jesus died, we in our brokenness are able to live a life, both now and for eternity, in relationship with God our Father and Creator, that is dependent on what Jesus has done, not on what we do.
Putting your faith in Jesus is the most important decision you can make. To the non-believer, the truth of the blameless Jesus dying on a cross for your sins means nothing. To the believer it is everything.
“For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
1 Corinthians 1 verse 18
So, consider God. Consider Jesus, his life, death and resurrection. And choose for yourself a life of being in relationship with God, not because of what you do or have done, but because of what Jesus did for you. Be who you were created to be. A child of God.
“But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God”
John 1 verse 12
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
Genesis 1 verse 1
From the very outset of the Bible, the reader is required to have faith. From the first four words, “In the beginning, God…” the reader is required to get their head around the idea of a God who exists outside of time (he is already in existence before the creation of the world) and outside of space, (if he is not in heaven or on earth, where is he?).
No answer is given as to where God came from, or why he decided that was the moment to create our known universe, so the reader has to exercise faith and believe in God’s existence before time and outside of space.
As God made the earth and filled it with animals and people, we see God’s loving plan to give mankind free will come into fruition through Adam and Eve disobeying God and taking fruit from the forbidden ‘tree of knowledge’.
To give mankind free will God created Satan and allows him to draw people away from relationship with God. God allows this so that those who believe in him are choosing to love him, rather than being forced to because they have to. Loving out of choice is real love. Forced love is not love.
By allowing Satan to draw people away from him, that also means that God allows suffering, pain, evil, to take place which may sound unloving, but that is part of God, the loving Father, allowing us, his children, to have free will.
We then see the early characters recorded in the Bible having relationship with God to varying degrees of success, before God gives Moses a set of 10 instructions to help God’s people live in relationship with him.
Slowly, following these rules becomes more important than the relationship with God they are there to help maintain. Then when God’s people are tired of having a God who is not in human form, they decide they want an earthly king to rule over them, so God first gives them Saul and then David. What follows is a line of kings, some of whom are good, most of whom are not.
By this point, the 10 rules that God gave mankind to live by as a guide to loving him and loving each other, have gotten way out of hand. God’s people had created so many rules and laws that being in relationship with God had become a whole religion of practices and performance. So, God sends Jesus, himself in human form, to live a sinless life so that he might die, so that his death would pay the price for the sin that mankind had committed, both then and in the future.
Through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection he showed people how to live and love. His teachings and resurrection were recorded by his disciples and the apostle Paul in the New Testament and formed the foundation for the early believers who would become known as Christians.
As Jesus returned to heaven to be with God, his parting gift to his believers was the Holy Spirit, God in spirit from, who would be with all believers to help guide and lead God’s people.
The early church grew at the time that the Roman Empire was falling, and seeing the power and enthusiasm that these believers in Christ had, the Roman Authorities slowly allowed the church’s practices within society, and gradually influenced the doctrine and teachings of the church so that it could retain control of the people. This became what we now know as the Roman Catholic Church.
Overtime the Roman Catholic Church added more and more rules and religious practices so that, just like in the Old Testament, the purpose of the church, to love and be in relationship with God, became a construct of religious practices and performance, which separated man from God.
In 1517 a Roman Catholic monk named Martin Luther led what is now known as the Protestant Reformation, where, recognising how far the Roman Catholic Church had moved away from the teachings of the Bible, he highlighted the hypocrisies and errors of the Roman Catholic Church in order that it might return to the teachings of Jesus and the Bible.
The Roman Catholic Church categorially rejected Martin Luther and his biblical truth and went even further in positioning themselves between man and God, by creating the sacraments as a way of people earning God’s grace, rather than receiving forgiveness as a free gift, further securing their power and control.
Martin Luther left the Roman Catholic Church and formed what is now known as the protestant church, where believers follow the teaching of the Bible and understand that grace and salvation are given by God through faith in Jesus and what he did on the cross.
In contrast, the Roman Catholic Church continued to add more practices and acts for people to do to earn God’s grace and their salvation, and in 1965 the Roman Catholic Church decreed that it could do no wrong and it had more authority than the word of God, and could add rules and practices as it sees fit.
Which leads us to today, where the Roman Catholic Church is still practicing and teaching a false version of the gospel. One where the individual has to earn salvation and is reliant on the Roman Catholic Church to have relationship with and be right by God. This is not what God wants for his people. It goes against the teachings of the Bible and it undermines what Jesus did on the cross to save mankind.
To receive the free gift of salvation and have relationship with God all we are required to do is believe in Jesus and receive the grace that his death and resurrection has given us.
“…everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”
Acts 10 verse 43
“because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.”
Romans 10 verse 9 – 10
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
Ephesians 2 verse 8 – 9
To believe in Jesus is to acknowledge and understand who he is and what he did on the cross, paying the price for man’s sin against God to reconcile man and God. To receive the grace given to us by God is to then turn from our old way of living, and instead live a life for and with God. We can do that by reading the Bible and the teachings of Jesus. Learning about who God is and what is important to him. Talking to God and listening to him. And allowing God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, to change us and lead us into a new way of living.
