For a long time, I couldn’t understand why Jesus had to die for our sins, and to add on to this, we have to believe in Him in order to experience salvation and eternal life. I was brought up believing that if we do good deeds, we stand a chance to go to heaven, else the next stage of my life could either be hell or becoming a humble animal, like mouse.
Both are theories that I found quite hard to fathom. To begin with, I didn’t ask to be born so that I could make such decisions. I was confused with issues like if I believe in reincarnation, then should I question who I were first to get to who I am now? Or, who decides which theory is right anyway? My late uncle, who was an atheist, liked to engage in the discussion of the “technical aspects” of all religions. In fact, I considered him to be one of the most well read people I knew; and his conclusion was “the purpose of any religions is to teach us to engage in good deeds and maintain high moral standards”. However, on his death bed, his wish was that his grandchildren be brought up as Christians.
One thing I did now for sure was I had a burden, making up of a cocktail of sins, guilt, hurt and rebellion against my loved ones. In my heart and mind, I really wanted to be a righteous person but somehow, my actions betrayed me. And the guilt thereon kept on accumulating and I could feel the load. I could not help myself to be a better person and neither could I get rid of my load. Then I found the answer in the bible:
“As far as the east is from the west, so He removes the guilt of our rebellious actions from us”
It was as though God cared that I was carrying a guilt load and He knew that this has to be removed, before I could start my life anew again. The removal of guilt could only be done supernaturally by God, not via human means. We could choose to ignore it and distract ourselves by other issues in our lives but we are powerless to remove guilt.
When Jesus died on the cross, He took away both our guilt and sins, so that we could start life anew again. God initiated our salvation and accomplished it. Now, He gave us a choice to decide, whether to accept or reject the gift of salvation. My heart had come home; my burden lifted.
“Now to one who works, his pay is not credited due to grace but to obligation. But to the one who does not work, but believes in the one who declares the ungodly righteous, his faith is credited righteousness.”
When we choose to believe in Him, that Jesus came to save us, so that we would not perish but have eternal life, God proclaim us to be righteous.
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