To Encourage You

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

So, I have some good news and some bad news today.  First the bad news: Unless Jesus returns in our lifetimes, we’re all going to die!  Not perhaps from the virus that’s plaguing the whole world at this moment, but if not from that, then from something else.  As my daughter said to me at a Major League Baseball game a couple years ago, “Dad, do you realize that 100 years from now, none of the people in this stadium will be alive?”  Sobering, but true.  You know it and I know it, regardless of the fact that we don’t really like to think about such things.   But now the good news – the really good news.  Someone has already died for us, and if we will put our faith in Him, and accept that death as the substitute for our own, we will live forever.  As perhaps the most well-known Scripture in all the Bible tells us in the words above, God so loved the world that He gave His only Son to save the world from perishing, i.e., from experiencing the “second death.” The second death is the separation from God in the world to come for all eternity which will come to those who have not believed in Him in the life that He’s given us here on earth.  As God has told us, we have all sinned (Romans 3:23), and the wages of that sin, the penalty for it, is death (Romans 6:23). “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).” Jesus bore our sins in His perfect and sinless body on the cross.  It is by this sacrifice of His own Son to pay the debt for our sins that God has made a way for us to live. As Jesus told Martha immediately before He raised her brother Lazarus from the grave, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me, though he die, yet shall he live,and everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this (John 11:25-26)?”  With these words Jesus is asking each and every one of us “Do you believe this?”  You see, the wonderful truth is that “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved (Romans 10:9-10).”  Saved from death, the second death.  It’s something that the coronavirus can’t touch, nor can any other cause of death in this physical world. It’s the wonderful good news of the gospel, the most wonderful news that has ever been told. And it’s available to each and every one of us who will believe.