Jesus reveals God’s love for us
Jesus is God’s deepest expression of His depth defying love for us. He is the full revelation of the goodness of the Father, in both His character and nature. He fully embodies everything there is to ever know about what God thinks about us, what he feels towards us and just how much he values each and every one of us.
God created us in His very own image.
He created us to walk as He walks; holy, right, and all together perfect. God cannot sin and will not sin. We see this displayed in Jesus who was God but walked as a man and did not sin.
The problem is that we know we are not perfect and that we all have sinned.
With God being perfect and incapable of doing wrong, as a just judge, He would be committing sin if He did not bring justice against our wrongdoing. He is bound to punish sin and the bible tells us that the payment for sin is death (Rom 6:23). Without Christ we have a death sentence over our heads.
Sin separates us from God.
In Amos chapter 8 we are told that in our deepest rebellion against God, our sins are like Israel’s. In verse 10 God tells us that the payment our sins deserve is something even worse than death; we deserve to suffer the loss of our one and only son. Something any loving parent would find horrifying in place of their own life.
God expresses His love for us in this; that whilst we were still sinners, He gave His one and only Son Jesus in our place. God’s sacrifice was the only way for us to be made right with Him. God mourned for His own Son Jesus so that He wouldn’t mourn the loss of humanity and so we wouldn’t have to die or suffer the loss of our own child.
Jesus was beaten, whipped and bruised, so we would be forgiven, set free, healed, delivered and redeemed! He took our place so that we would have His. This is the gospel.
“He restores my soul”
Psalm 23:3