New Believer's Bible Sample - Flipbook - Page 13
page A15
H ow You C an K now G od
1. Recognize and confess that you are a sinner.
No more excuses! What is sin? It is to fall short of God’s standard, which is
perfection itself. It is also to cross a line. All of us have done that and more.
We have broken God’s commandments and fallen short of his glory. The Bible
tells us, “Everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard”
(Romans 3:23). It also says, “If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling
ourselves and not living in the truth” (1 John 1:8).
God gave us his law, the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17), not to make
us righteous, but to show us how miserably we all fall short of his perfection.
His laws are like a moral mirror that shows us our flaws and sin.
2. Recognize that Jesus died on the cross for you.
The Bible tells us,
When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died
for us sinners. Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright
person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is
especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to
die for us while we were still sinners. (Romans 5:6-8)
There was simply no other way to satisfy the righteous demands of God. We
have no ability to improve ourselves, much less save ourselves, and therefore
we faced a future of permanent separation from God because of our sin. But
God, in his great love, sent his own Son to come down from Heaven and die
on the cross in our place.
I love the way the apostle Paul personalized it when he wrote, “the Son of
God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20, emphasis added).
God loves you and gave himself for you, too! There was no other way to resolve
this serious sin issue that we all face. Jesus was the only one who could ever
accomplish that, which is why he said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.
No one can come to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Christ is the
only way to the Father. He himself said so.
The apostle Peter echoed these words: “There is salvation in no one else! God
has given no other name under heaven by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
It’s not about what I did to please God or reach him on my own efforts. In fact,
I did everything to displease him, and so I failed to reach him. “There is one
God and one Mediator who can reconcile God and humanity—the man Christ
