Grace 3 - Christ Jesus ...

Thursday, Oct 30, 2014. God's love and grace for mankind culminates in Jesus. He is the center of God's grace, of God's truth, of God's forgiveness, of God's life. He is God himself, God in the flesh, the son of God.

Humans and Jesus …

Humans are fantastic beings. With our ability to make decisions, to plan, to be responsible, to know about good and evil, we could see ourselves as “grown up” beings. We are to be taken serious. Mankind has been called the crown of creation. And indeed, our ability to think, to feel, to plan, to use reason, to be responsible … all this together makes us quite an amazing part of this creation.

But we are not what we could be. We are not what we were meant to be. We are not completely good, not as pure and as spiritually healthy as we were meant when we were created. Indeed, we have lost spiritual life, most of it or all of it. The bible teaches that we are spiritually dead, when we are not linked to the source of life, to the creator and God of this world.

God wants to restore this connection. He made the decision to go into the flesh himself, to become human, to send his son into this creation. We talk about the incarnation, about Jesus being born as a little child, growing up, living his life … “the word became flesh” (John 1). All this is coming from pure love. We have not earned it to be searched by God. He wants us, he is trying to find us, to reach us, to link to us. Without him, we are lost in space. With him, we are found!

The Cross …

God is trying to find us. But he also needs to do more. He finds humans who are not as just and pure as needed. We are not what we were meant to be - and that means that we need to be reconciled and restored to be able to live with him. We need forgiveness. We need purification. Humans have always felt this need during world history. And God provides this forgiveness for us. He offers it in Jesus.

That leads us to the cross. The logic of the cross might sound simple, and at the same time it is quite hard to understand. Jesus dies. God puts the sin of the world onto him. All what is not good. All what needs punishment. All what needs rejection. It is all put onto him. It is put onto God himself - onto his only son, a part of the trinity, somehow God himself in his second person. God takes the sin of the world onto himself. All this is pure grace. God did not have to do it. But without Jesus we all remain separated from him - spiritually dead, without any possibility to link up to the pure and holy creator.

God has chosen to offer reconciliation. He has chosen to open a door for us to become pure - through Jesus. He has chosen to forgive all what we have done. This is called “good news” (in Greek “euangelion”) - and it is.

In Jesus, God gives us a hand. He re-connects. Just out of love! Let us take it, and then live in it … (Roland Potthast) ... more texts