Look Inside: b'Cross over to life'

q to life

is there anybody out there?

q to life

Life is ‘a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’ according to William Shakespeare in his play ‘Macbeth’. That is a very vivid picture. Could it also be an accurate description of your life? A furious amount of work, activity and pleasure-seeking, but finally, at the end, meaningless.

Kirk Douglas, the Hollywood film actor, once likened his life to the script of a second-rate feature movie. “It was corny’, he said. ‘If someone offered me the screenplay of my life to film I’d turn it down flat.”

q to life

Throughout history people have continually tried to find the purpose of life. They have turned to philosophies, religions, ideologies and utopian dreams. Some have tried drugs or mystical experiences. Others have invested in travel, education, relationships or money and material possessions.

However, in the midst of this maze of ideas, one person stands out above everybody else.

He is unique. He claims to bring good news for each one of us, and he claims to reveal a supernatural being, who cares for us all.

This person is Jesus Christ.

q to life

Jesus Christ has broken into history. He has shown us that this life is not simply an accident. We are not (as someone said) ‘just a fortuitous occurrence of atoms’. We are not stranded alone in the universe, without anyone greater than ourselves to turn to. There is a loving God who desires to be our true Father and love us as a true Father should.

So, life does not have be ‘a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’. Instead, our lives can be full and rich as we enter a friendship with the living God. In history, Jesus Christ showed that he is the way, the truth and the life — that is, the way to friendship with God. That’s why this booklet is called ‘Cross Over To Life’.

Its purpose is to explain the basics of the Christian faith and invite you to cross to life.

q to life

what is christianity?

What is a Christian? What is the message of Christianity?

There are a whole host of answers to these questions.

No wonder people are so often confused! Some of the more common ideas are that a Christian is someone who believes in God, or goes to church, or has been baptised, or is a decent, honest sort of person, or someone who prays.

Actually, although these are all good things, none of them make a person a Christian, and none of them are the essence of a true Christian. They are all things that we do ourselves. But the Christian message is about what God has done for us through Jesus Christ. That’s why his followers are Christ-ians. So, what is it that God has done for us?

in the beginning ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.’ This is the first sentence in the Bible and it is good news for us. Firstly, it tells us that this world is not meaningless. We are not just here by chance. Instead the world has been made for a

purpose by a personal God. Secondly, we see that God is not part of the universe but separate to and greater than it.

The God who created is bigger and more powerful than the forces of this world. The universe had a beginning but God is eternal. There is real hope in knowing the existance of an eternal, unchanging being who is far more stable than this fragile earth, and far more enduring than your fleeting life.

you are valuable Thirdly, this means that you are very important because God made you.

Imagine discovering an old, dusty, damaged oil-painting. Just as you are about to throw it out you notice the signature—a famous name like Van Gogh or Rembrandt. Suddenly, you value that painting very differently. Whatever its condition, if it is an original by one of those artists, it will probably be worth millions. Why? Because of the artist who painted it. Similarly, whatever condition you or I are in, we are incredibly valuable. Why? Because we are each a work of art created by the greatest artist of all—God.

what’s the point of life?

Humans were created by God, to live in a deep and close friendship with him— a relationship of love. We were also made to be dependent on God, with God as the sovereign ruler and humans as obedient subjects under his rule. Not like a dictator ruling the down-trodden masses, but the loving relationship of a good father and his children.

Only when we live in that relationship of love and dependence on God, can we know what it is to be truly free and live life to the maximum. That is how we were made, and, whether we like it or not, that is how we function properly.

Love, joy, peace, life, meaning and true freedom. All these things come from God and they are all fruits or products of a relationship with him.

Imagine a fish in a river. A fish was made to live in water. In water it is free, it has life and it can function properly. But suppose the fish said to itself “This isn’t freedom.

Freedom is doing what I want. What I want is to be free from the limitations of water and live on the riverbank.” So the fish jumps out of the water onto the bank. Is is free now? No, of course not! It is just about alive, but certainly not living life to the maximum. Actually, it is in the process of dying.

Why? Because it has left the environment it was made to live and thrive in. It has now entered a world of frustration, disease and slow gasping death.

And the human race has done something just as disastrous. We have also left the environment we were made to live in—the loving relationship of dependence on and obedience to God. Right back at the beginning of the human race, the first man, Adam, decided to break away from obedience to God. And the whole of humanity, including you and me, have been doing the same ever since.

what went wrong?

Humans want independence. We choose to go our own way and to be our own sovereign ruler. We want to make our own rules to live by. For instance, when do you ever hear governments asking what God requires of them and their nation? And how often have you ever asked God what he wants you to do? Have you ever judged your life by his standards? Even those who are religious live that way because they think it is the best way to live. It comes down to their opinion.

So humans have become the sovereign—we determine what we think is right or wrong.

If God agrees with us all well and good, but if not, then God is wrong and we are right.

This declaration of independence doesn’t only cut us off from God. It also cuts us off from all the fruits and products of that relationship—love, joy, peace, life, meaning and freedom. As a result, we feel alone in the universe. Although we can sometimes experience something of those things (because we are still living in God’s world), we can never fully enjoy them. Why? Because they can only be found in friendship with the God that we have now divorced.

Instead, just like the fish flapping about on the riverbank, we encounter other unpleasant experiences. As rebel ‘sovereigns’ of the world, the terrible fruits of our independence have resulted in a great mess. There is selfishness, greed, distrust, unkindness, stealing, lies, lust, wars, pride, gossip, malice, disease and suffering.

There is hatred instead of love, depression and sorrow instead of joy, guilt and strife

instead of peace, death instead of life, meaninglessness instead of meaning, slavery and addiction to overwhelming habits and appetites, instead of freedom to live the pure life that God loves and requires. Every key on your keyring proves that something is wrong with the world. And it is not only the world out there that is in a mess. It is also true of our personal lives.

So, our declaration of independence from God is like switching off a life-support machine. When we cut ourselves off from the life-giver the obvious result is that we die.

looking for an answer Many people look to this world for the things that can only fully come from God. Some put their hope in money and material possessions, in jobs and climbing the career ladder. Others look to human relationships or even fame. Still others try to look within and use techniques like meditation to find these things inside themselves.

And others turn to drugs and alcohol to rid themselves of the pain of living, or seek excitement in a world of fantasy.

All this searching in the wrong place is vividly described by God in the Bible.

‘My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.’ ( Jeremiah chapter 2, verse 13) The Bible describes a person walking through the desert, gasping with thirst, who sees a spring of clean, fresh water, but crawls right past! Instead, he goes and digs a well that cannot hold any water, except a little dirty slush. That is what he drinks and where he tries to find satisfaction.

God sees all this as nothing less than unfaithfulness to his love, and rebellion against his laws. Some people think that the word ‘sin’ means wrong acts like stealing, telling lies, sex before marriage and getting drunk, but these are just the fruit or products of sin.

Sin itself is the desire to control our own lives, rather than allowing God to be the master.

It is walking straight past God, the spring of living water, and digging our own well.

the consequences The first consequence of sin is a divide between God and people.

The Bible says, ‘But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.’

(Isaiah chapter 59, verse 2)—or see reference on previous page.

We have not only cut ourselves off from God, but we are now quite unable to get back to friendship with him. Why? Because sin has made us enemies of God. So the second consequence of sin is that God must judge us for that sin—for our unfaithfulness to him and breaking his laws. God cannot treat that as if it doesn’t really matter. It does matter! Sin must be punished. God has told us, in the Bible, that the wages of sin is death, and after death, judgment. That means sin is the cause of physical and spiritual death.

Nothing can change all this because God is a God of righteousness and justice.

He cannot pretend that righteousness and justice do not matter.

He cannot pretend that people haven’t sinned. Justice must be done, and God’s just,

right penalty for breaking his law must be satisfied.

What a terrible mess! Our declaration of independence has cut us off from the only one who can fulfil our deepest needs. He is now the unmovable judge who stands against us.

what can we do about it?

Many people try to bridge the great gap between themselves and God by doing good things. They hope to impress God. But the Bible tells us that God is not impressed. That is because however good and proper these things may be, they come from us.

Because we are polluted by sin, everything we do is also badly affected by sin. Jesus clearly taught that our hearts (the very centre of our being) are polluted by sin.

The Bible actually says that ‘All our righteous acts (good works, morality, etc.) are like filthy rags’ (Isaiah chapter 64, verse 6) So, religion, morality, giving to charity, doing good deeds, going to church etc. are all things that can be good, but they do not

impress God until our hearts are clean.

There is another reason why good works cannot help us. Even if we could stop sinning from now on, which we can’t, we would still not have paid the penalty for all our previous sins. We would still face judgment.

What can we do to help ourselves? The short answer is nothing. The situation is hopeless. But read on.

the greatest news in the world We cannot rescue ourselves. We need the help of God, and the Christian good news is God to the rescue! There is a bridge over the great divide between us and God—a bridge in the shape of the cross. That is because Jesus Christ died on a cross to make a way for us to get back to friendship with God. Remember that God made us to have a living, loving relationship with him? Remember that the great divide was caused by our rebellion against God? Yet, despite our rebellion, God did not stop loving us. God has found a way to still punish our sin but, at the same time, to let us escape that punishment and come back to him.

Listen to what Jesus Christ said.

‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.’ (John chapter 3 verses 16 to 18) This is amazing! God’s own Son became a human— Jesus Christ. And Jesus was perfect—he never sinned and he never disobeyed God, his Father. So he didn’t have to die because he didn’t deserve any punishment for sin.

Then why did Jesus die? The answer is that he died for others.

He stood in the place of sinners, by taking the sins of others upon himself, along with the punishment and judgment for those sins. That is why he voluntarily died such a terrible death.

Jesus is the substitute for everyone who will trust him. Of course, if someone does not want to trust him, then Jesus himself said that they stand condemned already.

The cross of Jesus Christ is the only way that God has provided—the only way out of the mess of sin, back to friendship with God and a fresh start, where our sin is forgiven and forgotten.

But the story of Jesus doesn’t end with the cross, because Jesus rose from the grave.

The universal grip of death is now broken by this one man Jesus. Instead of God having to punish us with eternal death and separation from him, God can now offer us eternal life as a free gift. A free gift to us, but one that cost him very much.

how do you cross over to life?

Let’s think about gifts. A gift cannot be earned. When you are given a birthday gift, you don’t offer to pay for it because it is a gift. However, a gift needs to be taken or received.

God’s gift of a way across the great divide is already there. But, if you want your sins forgiven, if you want to get across to God and start living life as it is meant to be lived, then you have to take the gift and cross over.

How do you do that? By asking Jesus to rescue you. Trust him to get you right with God. Believe that when he died on the cross, he died for you.

Ask yourself these questions and think about your answers.

• Which side of the ‘divide’ am I on?

• Have I come to know God’s forgiveness?

• Have I taken God’s free gift?

Read the following prayer and think about it. If you understand it, and really want to pray it yourself, read it again. Then pray it in your own words to God. Heavenly Father, I want to cross over to a new life. I have often been selfish, proud and wanted my own way and not yours. You are my creator, but I have acted as though I was Lord of all. I have not listened to your Word, the Bible, and have not loved your Son Jesus.

I now see that all my sin is against you. With your help, I want to turn from running my life my way. I trust that Jesus died to cleanse me from all my guilt. I want to cross over to life right now, and take Jesus as my Saviour and Lord of my life.

Amen.

If you prayed this prayer or you just want to find our more about becoming a Christian, please contact the person who gave you this tract, or the person named overleaf.