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Someone has said, "Knowing Christ died--that's history.
Believing He died for me--that's salvation." A personal
relationship with Christ begins at the moment of our salvation. Jesus
referred to this event as a second birth (Jn. 3:3). Only when we are
born spiritually into God's family do we become His children, His
friends, His servants, and members of His spiritual kingdom.
While we may not know exactly when this new
life begins, we can understand the steps we need to take to begin
this relationship.
FIRST STEP: We need to admit our lost
condition. All of us are born to the parents of a fallen humanity. We
come into this world separated from the life of God and absorbed with
an interest in finding satisfaction, significance, and personal
independence on our own terms. In the process, we don't show a
natural desire for the kind of God who made us for Himself (Rom.
3:11-12).
While we may look good to ourselves as long as
we measure ourselves by ourselves, Jesus Christ showed us our sin. He
is the One who showed us what it means to have a personal
relationship with God. He is also the One who said that He didn't
come into this world to help good people, but "to seek and to
save that which was lost" (Lk. 19:10).
The Bible says we all come into this physical
world physically alive but spiritually dead--missing out on the
quality of life for which God made us. The apostle Paul wrote,
"All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Rom.
3:23), "There is none righteous, no, not one" (Rom. 3:10),
and "The wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6:23).
SECOND STEP: We need to know what God has done
for us. The word gospel means "good news." The gospel of
Christ is that God Himself loved us enough to send His own Son into
this world to rescue us from ourselves and our sin (Jn. 1:1-4; 3:16).
The good news is that Jesus lived the quality
of life that God intended for us to live. Without flaw, He loved His
heavenly Father with all of His heart, soul, and mind. Without fail,
He showed us what it means to love our neighbor as ourselves.
Then, to solve the problem of our lost
relationship with His Father, Jesus died in our place, offering Himself
as a perfect sacrifice to pay the price of sin. Because He was not
only man but God our Creator as well (Jn. 1:1-14), His death was of
infinite value. When He rose from the dead, He proved that He had
died in our place to pay the price of all sin--past, present, and
future. With one sacrifice, He paid for the least--and the worst--of
our sin.
THIRD STEP: We need to personally believe and
receive God's gift. While we all have earned the wages of spiritual
death and separation from God (Rom. 6:23), no one can earn a
relationship with God. It is a gift of His love and mercy--not a
reward for our effort. No one is saved by trying to be good. We are
saved by trusting in Christ.
This is why the apostle Paul could write,
"For by grace [undeserved favor] you have been saved through
faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of
works, lest anyone should boast" (Eph. 2:8-9; see also Rom. 4:5;
Ti. 3:5).
This may sound too simple. But it takes a
miracle of God's grace to break our pride and self-sufficiency. It
takes God's Spirit to draw us into this kind of personal
relationship. If this is your desire, this is how you can begin.
The actual words we say to God to receive this
gift may vary (Lk. 18:13; 23:42-43). What is important is that we
believe God enough to be able to say, "Father, I know I have
sinned against You. I believe that Jesus is Your Son, that He died
for my sins, and that He rose from the dead to prove it. Now I accept
Your offer of eternal life. I accept Jesus as Your gift for my
salvation."
If this is the honest expression of your
heart, welcome to God's family! By simple, childlike faith you have
entered into a personal relationship with the One who made you and
saved you for Himself.
Curtis
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