Three Problems

This is the first and most important message that any of these person could ever hear. I call it “the three problems talk”.

We will begin with the premise that God is real and that He says he loves us deeply and wants to spend eternity with us in heaven. But when we think about this we are naturally presented with three serious problems. 1; we can’t understand God. 2; we can’t understand His love. And 3; we can’t earn heaven. These are huge problems that must be solved in order for this whole church thing to really work out. So, let’s look at the problems a bit more.

Problem 1. According to the bible, God is eternal, He is everywhere, He is all knowing and all powerful. We can’t see Him and don’t literally hear him speak. We can’t touch him like we would touch anyone else, but we are told to sing and pray to Him? It is honestly a difficult scenario. How am I supposed to have some deep intimate relationship with a God that is so abstract and difficult for me to understand. Can I serve something that I can’t even think about without my head hurting? Many people try to simplify God into an idol or make up their own system around Him that makes it easier to comprehend, but the fact is that our little minds just can’t grasp the vastness of our Creator. This is a problem that we must consider.

Problem 2. In the same subject line, this incomprehensible God tells us that He loves us. He says it more than anything else in scripture. The word love is written 310 times in the bible and it almost always refers to God’s love. But how are we supposed to grasp the love of a God that we can’t even begin to understand in the first place. How can we have a loving relationship with this God when we can’t even grasp what or who He is. I want to believe that He loves me, but frankly, love is a verb. Love is an action. Love is shown. And when someone says they love me, that is great, but when it comes down to it, my natural response is to say “prove it”.

Problem 3. Being in charge of creation, God is in charge of what is right and wrong as well as who gets to enter heaven with him forever. And what God says is that if there is any sin, any disobedience any wrong doing in our life, we don’t qualify for heaven. He says that those things must be punished instead, and that all sin will be punished. What we know also, is that no one is perfect. No one can do everything right for their whole life. God helps us see this when He gave the ten commandments. We only get a couple points down the list before we realize that we are, by our own actions, disqualified from heaven and deserve punishment instead. Big problem.

The solution.

As usual, Jesus is the answer to our questions. What God did was bring himself into His own creation in order to establish a relationship with His people, show His love for them and provide the path to heaven. It’s amazing. When God became a man, He gave us a version of himself that we could actually comprehend. It is impossible to think of God, but it is possible to think of Jesus. I can put a sort of face on the useable, a body to the untouchable and a person to the infinite God. It is the person of Jesus that solves the first big problem, it is God as a man. And when I ask God to prove that He loves me, I can’t ignore the incredible act of sacrifice He executed on my behalf. The sin that God says must be punished, was mine to receive punishment for. But Jesus, stepped in and took that punishment for me…all of it. He died in my place. I think if someone is willing to die for me when they don’t have to, that I would believe they love me. And it is through this display of love that problem 3 is solved as well. If my sin is paid for, and the punishment has been received by Jesus, I now qualify, according to the rules that God set forth, to enter heaven with Him forever. It is an incredible deal.

We don’t have to try to earn heaven. God did everything that needed to be done. All we need to do now is just say “thanks”. That’s it. No need to earn favor, impress anyone, become righteous. There is no need to reach some minimum level of holiness in order to qualify for the love of God or for the blessing of eternity. The fact is that Jesus; God himself said “it is finished”. And He meant it. We can go forward, secure in our eternal destination, being a vessel of the Spirit from now till the end, being slowly transformed and reformed to be more like Him all the time. What a deal.