Because God is the Creator, this is His Universe and His Earth; and because
He Created every living thing on it -- including me and you -- therefore He is
the rightful owner of everything. However, because He created mankind (both Man and Woman) with a FREE WILL (with the capacity to
choose for ourselves whom we will love, and whom we will serve, and what we do with
our time, etc.) that meant that we were created with the capacity to seek to
know God and either Acknowledge Him as our Creator and offer Him our Love and
our talents and our time,
or to Reject Him by denying His very existence and/or choosing not to seek God,
but rather to ignore Him and serve ourselves or even another god invented by man.
However, because God is righteous, that means that all the
books must be closed at some point in the future -- meaning that everyone will
be Judged and either given the gift of Eternal Life in God's Kingdom, (because
we have acknowledged Him and His rightful authority over us), or sent to Hell
because of our stubbornness, and/or our willful unbelief in the very One who
made us, or because of our refusal to acknowledge Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior and to
serve Him with our time and talents (not because doing so will in any way earn our Salvation, but because we are thankful for what He
has already done for us, in paying the price for our forgiveness, and because we want to acknowledge Him as our Lord and
please Him by offering Him our time and talents during our short stay upon the earth.
Eph. 2:8-9, 5:9; Rom. 3:20-23; 15:1; II 5:9-10.
Jesus Had to Go to the Cross because in order for God to forgive mankind for
his (and her) rebelliousness and disobedience, and still remain righteous, someone (who
was innocent) had to pay the price, and that price was DEATH (See Romans 6:1-14,
23; See also Hebrews 7:22-28; 9:11-14; 18-28). In other words, the Death of Jesus was
God's (advance Credit Card) payment for the sins of mankind However, His
death will only be Credited to those who acknowledge God, and His rightful
authority over their lives -- and acknowledge the fact that He sent His Son, Jesus, to die on the
cross for our sins, that He was raised from the dead, and
that we acknowledge Jesus as our Lord, who has the right to rule over
our lives (I Cor. 15:1-3; John 1:12). It is like a package deal.
It's either NO Jesus = NO God, or Know Jesus = Know God.
In other words, we cannot
reject Jesus and live our lives merely for ourselves and our own pleasure and
expect that we will get away with it; for it is no longer enough to just believe
in God, when in fact, God has told us to Listen to His Son, and has raised Him
from the Dead, and even appointed Him to be our Judge. See John 5:22-23;
14:1, 6; 23-24; 15:1-7; Matthew 7:19-23; 28:18-20.
God's righteousness and gracious offer is illustrated by the following story.
Once there was a wealthy Judge, who had a wayward son. And one day that
son got into trouble with the Law, and came before his father, who was both a
righteous Judge and a gracious one. However, because his son had
committed a crime, someone had to pay the fine. And in this case the law
required a fee of $50,000. However, the son didn't
have the money, but was virtually penniless. So the father, not wanting to
send His son to prison, pronounced the sentence, and
then took off his robe and went down and paid the fine himself. Of course,
the son could have refused to allow his father pay the fine if that is what he
wanted -- and in which case his father would have either sent his son to Jail,
or ceased to be a righteous Judge and thus surrender his own Integrity.
We are like that son. God wants to forgive us, but if we refuse to
acknowledge who He is, or to honor Him as our Lord, or to allow Jesus Christ to pay the
price for our forgiveness, then we leave Him NO CHOICE but to judge us according
to our works (Rom. 3:20-23; 10:13). In other words, we really do NEED to have the
assistance of our Maker in this life that He has freely given us.
Who
was Jesus Anyway