What We Have

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Week 2:  What We Have

Since God loves humanity and desires a relationship with us, and since we are unable to pull ourselves out of our own darkness, it was necessary for God to intervene and create a path of “redemption” through which we could be reconnected to our life-giving relationship with God.  This path was and is Jesus Christ.  Through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the penalty for sin has been paid and the doorway has been opened for anyone who chooses to enter into the “ Kingdom of God ” (the life-giving relationship with God).  This pathway is a gracious gift of God that cannot be earned by any amount of “good works”.  Anyone who admits they are a sinner and not able to save themselves, believes that Jesus is the only way to reconnect to God, and commits to follow Jesus, will be “saved,” “born again,” “redeemed,” “justified,” “called a child of God.”  Placing trust in Jesus is like being born into a family or like being legally bound to a betrothal agreement.  Positionally, you are 100% in the Kingdom/Family of God.  Your guilt has been removed and you are now a child of God, ready to begin the process of growing.

Outline of Study

• Jesus Christ
• Grace
• Analogies
• Positional
• Justification
• How Can I Be Saved?

Jesus Christ

Read the following passages from the Bible to find out what Jesus said about himself.

Mark 14:61-62

Luke 22:70

John 6:35

John 8:12

John 8:23

John 8:58

John 10:7-18

John 11:25-26

John 14:6

John 15:5

Read the following passages from the Bible to find out what Jesus' followers said about him.

John 1:1-18

Matthew 16:16

John 11:27

Romans 5:1-11

Think about this...

Many people think that Jesus was a just a good teacher that gave us some generic moral principles for better living.  That just isn't the case.  Jesus was a radical.  Jesus claimed to be God and claimed to be the only way to access the Father and have eternal life.  Those are the words of a gentle, benign, moralist.  Those words were either spoken by

• a liar
• a lunatic
• or the Lord himself.

Which do you think he was?  Would 12 people who lived with him for over three years have given their lives for him if he was a liar or a lunatic.  No way.

There is no middle ground with Jesus.  You can't just say he was a nice guy.  He either was everything he said he was or we need to throw it all out because he was whacked!

Jesus looked at his disciples one day and asked, "Who do people say that I am?"  They replied that some said he was a prophet, others think he was John the Baptist.  Then he looked at his closest friends, staring them intently in the eye, and asked, "Who do you say that I am?"

Peter responded and said, "You are the Christ (the Messiah), the son of the living God!"

Jesus looks at you today and asks the same question.  Who do you think Jesus is?  The answer to that question will impact your eternal destiny.  With Jesus, you have the hope of eternal union with God.  Apart from him you will experience eternal separation from God in utter darkness.  Which will it be?

God is Trinity

One of the greatest mysteries of the universe is that God is trinity.  This means that there is only one God who is eternal.  While there is one God, God exists in three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  These are not three separate gods, but are three persons in the one eternal God.  There is nothing in creation that is like God, therefore there is no analogy to which we can compare the trinity.  What we do know is that the Bible teaches that there is only one God, but that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  We believe this based on faith that the Bible is God's true revelation of himself.  While we may not fully understand it, we believe it to be a true description of the nature of the infinite, eternal, almighty, creator of the universe.

Jesus is the second person of the trinity who became human in order to fully reveal the nature of God to humans.  If God had not become human through Jesus, God would remain a completely abstract concept, completely unattainable to the finite human mind.

He Lived to Teach Us

If you want to know how to live a good life that is full of joy, purpose, and meaning, then listen to Jesus' instructions and follow what he says.  Jesus was the perfect human who showed us what being a human was intended to be from the beginning.

He Died to Save Us

The sin of humanity severed us from the life-giving presence of God.  Sin required punishment.  It required the death penalty.  It required payment.  The problem was that no human was good enough to pay the price for sin.  That is why God became human in the form of Jesus Christ and sacrificed his own life in our place.  Without the death of Jesus there would be no justice and the cancerous effect of sin would dominate the human condition forever.

He Rose to Empower Us

Had Jesus simply died he would have been no different than any other religious teacher.  People would have built a monument on his grave and moved on to the next teacher.  The real power of the good news of the Kingdom of God is that Jesus did not stay dead after his crucifixion.  Jesus rose from the dead through the power of the Holy Spirit.  By rising from the dead he showed that He has power over death itself.  That same Spirit that raised him from the dead has been promised to indwell and empower anyone who chooses to follow Jesus.

He Ascended to Commission Us

Jesus said that if he did not leave the Holy Spirit would not come.  Jesus trained his followers for over three years to spread the good news of new life in God's Kingdom all around the world.  Jesus ascended back to the Father in order that his people would learn confidence and, through the power of the Holy Spirit, bring the good news to everyone.

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Grace -- Its a Free Gift

We need to get one thing straight.  There is nothing that we can do to earn salvation.  There is nothing that we can do in our own strength to become good enough to enter into the family of God.  No one is smart enough, strong enough, powerful enough, or good enough to meet the 100% perfection that God demands of all his children.  Sounds pretty bleak doesn't it?  It would be bleak if we were left on our own to work our way to Heaven.  But God loved us too much to leave us lost in the darkness.  Through Jesus Christ he has offered to us a gift of perfection.  Because of Jesus' death and resurrection, our debt has been paid and an offer has been made in the courts of God's justice to declare us "not guilty" and worthy to enter into the Kingdom.

This is called GRACE.  It is God's loving mercy extended towards us.  All we have to do is admit that we need it, then accept it and say, "thanks!"

Read Ephesians 2:1-10

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Analogies

• Being "Born Again"

Read John 3:1-21

Galatians 3:26-4:7

When we decide to follow Jesus we are born into his family.  Just like any child, we need to grow and develop over time.  In the beginning we will stumble around, not knowing what we are doing.  Over time, a few skinned knees, some discipline from our Heavenly Father, and plain old hard work, we will grow and become mature.  For more on this read the section on Position.

• Being Engaged

The picture of the church as the bride of Christ is seen in Ephesians 5:23 where an analogy is drawn that compares the husband and wife relationship in marriage to Christ and His bride the church. The illustration is apt because it reveals the magnitude of Christ’s love for the church (Eph. 5:2, 25). A second emphasis of the illustration is the exalted position of the bride.  As in the Oriental wedding custom, at the engagement (betrothal) the bride receives the promise of future blessing with her husband. Similarly, the church today is an espoused bride, awaiting her husband’s return from glory. The second stage of the Oriental marriage was the wedding itself, when the husband came to take the bride to be with him. In an analogous figure, the church awaits the return of Christ, when she will be espoused to her husband (John 14:1–3; 1 Thess. 4:16–17). In Oriental weddings, the wedding feast followed; similarly the church, as Christ’s bride, awaits the husband’s return (Rev. 19:7–9) and the glory of the millennial kingdom to follow.

(Enns, P. P. 1997, c1989. The Moody handbook of theology. Moody Press: Chicago, Ill.)

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Positional

When a child is born into a family, that child is 100% a member of that family.  Nothing can ever change that.  Yet, the child is not aware of what it means to be a member of that family.  The child isn't even aware of itself yet.  It will take a long process of growth and development before the Position of child will become an actual, relational, experiential reality.

There are two aspects to being a child.  There is the positional aspect and the relational aspect.  Just because a child is born to a mother that doesn't mean that the child and mother automatically have a thriving, dynamic, mutually fulfilling relationship.  The mother could abandon the child.  The child could grow and turn away from the mother.  The birth grants the child a "position" as a member of the family.  What happens after the birth, through the cultivation of a relationship, will determine the quality of that child's life in the family.

The gracious gift of salvation that has been extended to us through Jesus Christ gives us birth into God's family.  It establishes us as 100% children of God.  Our relationship with God is like that of an infant and a mother.  It is completely one-sided.  We, as the infants, are completely dependent upon the milk, nurture, protection, and discipline of the mother.  As we grow and develop the quality of the relationship will develop and emerge.  This growth process is the subject of week 5-7.

For now, it is important to understand that receiving "salvation" grants us birth into God's family.  It grants us new life and a new hope to move away from the selfish, sinful, destructive patterns that have entangled us, and to be transformed into the image of Jesus and to experience the joy and fulfillment for which we were created.

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Justification

One analogy that is used throughout scripture to describe the relationship between God and humans is that of a court of law.  God is the judge and the maker of the Law.  We have broken the law and deserve, by every standard of justice, to be condemned by the law and given the full punishment, which is death and eternal separation from God.

Because God is a loving God, he does not want us to suffer this punishment.  Yet, because he is a just God, he cannot ignore his own law.  Therefore, someone had to pay the penalty for sin.  In an act of Grace, God took off the robes of Judge and put on the clothing of humanity.  He stepped down from the judge's bench and paid the penalty himself, through Jesus' death on the cross.

By paying the penalty for sin, we were justified in the eyes of God's justice system.  The term justified means to be free from guilt.   Some have said that it is just-as-if we had never sinned.

This gracious gift of justification has been extended to anyone who would believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that his death is the only way through which we can gain access to God the Father.

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