With all the emphasis on being world citizens these days, Christians are often seen as being bigots for believing Jesus is the singular way to heaven. Yet, as Christians we can see from the Bible that God the Father has always longed for a personal relationship with mankind. Because of His very nature of being holy He could not relate to us in an individual way because of our sin problem. Sin has always separated mankind from God.
To take care of our sin problem, God tried to make covenants with man. In the book of Genesis, we see God stepping in and making a covenant with Adam. The Adamic Covenant required that Adam and Eve not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but they sinned and broke the agreement. God made another covenant with Noah and then a different one with Abraham. These agreements were also broken because of sin. In time, God made a covenant with Moses and gave him the Ten Commandments. Right, we haven’t been able to keep those either. Then King David who was said to have a heart after God’s own heart, entered into a covenant with the Father, but sinned too spoiling the covenant.
Even from a cursory review of the Old Testament, we see that sin always had to be satisfied with a blood sacrifice. Countless animals were forfeited and great care was taken for how they should be presented to God as compensation for sin. Since man could never keep up his part of the covenant, one day God the Father set into motion the ultimate solution for man’s sin problem. With the agreement before the world was ever created, He and Jesus knew of a New and Everlasting covenant they would make with mankind. God the Father’s son Jesus would come to the earth as a human himself, live a perfect life, and then as an innocent man be humiliated, tortured, and murdered on a cross as ultimate payment for the sins everyone. That’s why in Matthew 26:28 we hear Jesus say, “For this is my blood, which confirms the covenant between God and his people. It is poured out as a sacrifice to forgive the sins of many,” (NLT)
These days most people are repulsed by the sight or thought of blood. “Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood,” (Romans 3:24,25, NLT).
As Christians this is what makes us unique. We don’t have to follow a list of rules to get to heaven. Hebrews 9 describes the grueling process mankind use to have to go through to have relationship with God. Instead, because of Christ we can simply accept the precious gift of Jesus’ sacrifice for our sins and turn away from them with the strength of his Holy Spirit living inside us. Hebrews 10:22 tells us that we can, “go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting in him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean and our bodies have been washed with pure water,” (NLT).
No other religion offer’s a path to heaven without a set of unobtainable good works. This is why we call the gospel of Jesus Christ the good news. It’s something worth shouting about! I hope we can all say with R.A. Torrey:
“I am ready to meet God face to face tonight and look into those eyes of infinite holiness, for all my sins are covered by the atoning blood.”
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