In my role as Pastor I get questions regarding lots of different subjects directed at both Biblical and Life type issues. I recently had a lady ask me some great questions. She’s not a believer in Jesus but is working to come to faith, she’s a pre-Christian! I thought I’d share her questions and my response so if these questions ever come up in your conversation you may have an answer you can share.

Her questions…Why would God give the world his perfect son to be slaughtered so we can be forgiven for our sins? Why wouldn’t He just make us perfect instead of the vile sinful creatures He says we are? If it all goes back to Adam and Eve eating the stupid apple, then why did He allow the snake in the garden to begin with?

My answers…I think all three of these questions can be summed up with one additional question. The one question I’d ask is: Why did God create anything or everything in the first place? If God’s the creator then why did He create anything? He didn’t have to, He could’ve been fine eternally living in unity with himself…God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit could’ve existed eternally in perfection without anything or anyone else. The Bible says In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…why did He bother!? Why did God bother with this mess? The world seems like such a hot mess most of the time! God didn’t need to create the universe or anything for that matter!! But He created everything including you and me.

In the Bible David wrote in Psalm 139…O lord you’ve knit me together in my mother’s womb! He goes on to describe God as our creator. I believe the Bible’s the word of God and I believe it’s true. There’s so much evidence to prove the Bible is a book given to us from outside time and space that I’m willing to stake my life on it. If the Bible’s true, it says every single person is a special creation of God. God was intimately involved in creating you to be just who you are! You are loved and special to God.

As we understand who God is we can understand why He created everything. The Bible says God is love, that’s his character, that’s who He is! So what is love? Love isn’t just warm fuzzy feelings or something you fall into and out of at the drop of a hat. Love is living for someone else’s benefit. A mother caring for her child, that’s love! When you put someone’s needs above your own and care for them in whatever they need that’s love. It can lead to emotions but love isn’t passion, love is purpose; intentional engagement, meeting the needs of someone else that’s love. We could say love isn’t love until it’s given away! Until I reach out to you and serve your needs you can’t know my love!

If God is love then he’s a lover, if he’s a lover then He needs something to love, something or someone to give his love to. God created this universe and everything in it including you and me to display his great love. He created you so He could give you his love. God’s ultimate purpose is to create for himself a family that for all eternity He can lavish his great love upon. He desires people who love him because they want to not because they have to! Have to is religion, want to is relationship. God wants people He can have relationship with!

John 1:12 says to all who receive him, who believe on his name He gives them the right to become children of God! God wants children who chose him because they love him. God wants a family! God’s created Angels that live in his presence. They worship him, they obey him, they serve him, they fight battles for him; they do all this because they see him, know who He is and are unable to do anything else. Their adoration, worship and holy obedience isn’t based on the choice of love, it’s based on compulsion.

Because God’s all powerful, all glorious, all everything they’re in a sense “forced” into a state of complete awe by his very glory. They serve him out of fear of his glorious greatness. God created humans, placed us on this earth and gave us a free choice; to love and serve him or love and serve ourselves. In order for us to love him by choice, which is true love, we had to be given a choice. He allowed Satan to rise in rebellion, believing his own press that He could be and should be God himself. He allowed Satan to enter the Garden in the form of a serpent to give Adam and Eve the opportunity to choose: believe and serve God, or believe the snake and serve themselves.

Since then humanity has had a choice, obey and love God or obey and love their own desires. God transforms those who obey and love him by choice into his children. In the future, all who’ve chosen to love God will live as his family forever in total bliss!

God’s holy and pure, to have a relationship with him, to be in his family, we have to also be holy and pure! The Bible tells us how to be holy. The commands of God are detailed in scripture. One day someone asked Jesus what’s the greatest command. He said the greatest command is love the Lord your God with all your heart soul mind and strength and a second command is just like the first, love your neighbor as yourself. If God is God and holds the universe together as the Bible says then He certainly fully deserves all our love and attention. To be holy enough to have a relationship with God is fairly simple…love God with all your heart from the moment you’re born till the moment you die, you’ll live in relationship with him here on earth and forever in heaven! Remember love is living for someone else’s benefit, so we’re commanded to live loving God every day of our lives.

No big deal right!!? Wrong…Cause most of the time I love Claude more than I love God. I haven’t lived up to the standard God has set. I live for my benefit most of the time. God says the soul who sins will die…the wages of sin is death…when I love Claude, live for Claude, do things that satisfy Claude over God, the Bible calls that sin and calls me a sinner! Because I find something else of more worth and value than God I’m a sinner. I behave in sinful ways and do things God says not to do. What I love is what I’ll worship, most of the time we all worship ourselves!

Both God and I have a problem. The problem for God is he’ll never have the family He desires because all of us choose to love ourselves more than we love God. The Bible says all of us have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory…we all love something more than we love God! We’re all sinners who deserve punishment! The problem for us is because we naturally sin our only hope is eternal separation from God suffering the penalty of our sin never knowing the beauty, glory, hope and peace God offers to his children. God cannot allow sin to go unpunished, if He did he’d be saying He doesn’t deserve 100% of our devotion and love; that’s a lie because he’s the ONLY one who deserves it!

God in an unbelievable act of love became flesh, his name is Jesus. He came to this earth, lived a life loving God perfectly; He didn’t deserve the penalty of sin, death. But He chose to die allowing sinful men to crucify him. He didn’t deserve judgement but He took your penalty and my penalty. Jesus died on the cross intentionally to take the anger, wrath and curse on himself! Jesus was sent by the Father to be a substitute for all the punishment you and I deserved. All the love we couldn’t give him but should have He completed, the death we should’ve died, He died for us.

Then Jesus did an amazing thing, three days after his death, He rose from the dead, walked out of the grave. By rising from the dead He proved everything He said and did was true. God’s judgement has been satisfied because someone died to pay the debt for sin. He rose and won the victory over death. Now, God can offer us forgiveness, grace, and mercy. We can become his children by repenting of our sin, telling God we’re sorry from our heart and changing our direction. By believing that Jesus lived, died, rose again, believing that only through him we have a relationship with God.

Why would God give the world his perfect son to be slaughtered so we can be forgiven for our sins? Because He loves us so much, because He loves you so much. God is true to his judgement…sinner’s must die. God is true to his love and desires to have you as his child. Someone who didn’t sin, who didn’t deserve death died. God looks at that sacrifice and his judgement is satisfied. He looks at you and says I know you don’t love me all the time but your penalty’s been paid so I forgive your sin of not loving me and you’re now my child.

Why wouldn’t He just make us perfect instead of the vile sinful creatures we are? So we can choose him out of love not living as little robots with no choice. Choice is love, no choice is cold religious action. If your boyfriend had to be with you rather than wanting to be with you, you wouldn’t like it either!

If it all goes back to Adam and Eve eating the stupid apple of knowledge, then why did He allow the snake in the garden to begin with? To give us a choice between the love, grace, and mercy of God or the hate, selfishness, bitterness, and death of Satan!