I Turned to the Lord

 Jesus says in Mark 10:15, "Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it." 

 God loves you and made you for a purpose.  He wants you to be with Him in heaven someday. The Bible says that in heaven "there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain" (Revelation 21:4). God is perfect and He can't allow sin into heaven. No one can ever be good enough to earn their way into heaven. "There is no one righteous, not even one" (Romans 3:10). So God had a plan! He sent His Son, Jesus, to die for your sins so you can go to heaven. He took your sins, nailed them to the cross and offers you Jesus' righteousness in exchange - this is a free gift for all who believe in Jesus as their Savior. "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" (John 3:16). Jesus didn't stay dead, but rose again to life on the third day (celebrated on Easter)! Turn to the Lord right now - you can pray and tell Him you believe that Jesus died for your sins and rose again, you can ask for forgiveness, and thank Him for the free gift of salvation!  

In John 1:12 it says, "Yet to all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God". When we feel guilty over past sins and grit our teeth to bear out the consequences, it seems like we are essentially still paying for our own sins (paying penance), rather than living as a beloved child of God. Such an amazing verse is, “Having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; He has taken it away, nailing it to the cross” (Col. 2:14). Our sins are gone!  There’s no more punishment for us to pay because there’s no charge.  The absurdity of continuing to pay for our own sins reminds me of hearing of a man whose wife ordered him to pay child support as part of a divorce settlement...they had no children though…the man had to explain to the judge that they actually had no children to pay child support on. Similarly, in this case, the judge is telling us, there are no charges!  We are seen as righteous because of believing in Jesus as our Savior. “God made Him Who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corin. 5:21).  Praise God! And Romans 3:21-22 says, “But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify.  This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.”  

“I delight greatly in the LORD; my soul rejoices in my God. For He has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of His righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns His head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels” (Isaiah 61:10). 

If you haven’t believed in Jesus as your Savior, you can turn to the Lord right now!  You can pray and tell Him you believe that Jesus died for your sins and rose again, you can ask for forgiveness, and thank Him for the free gift of salvation!  

 “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord” (Acts 3:19).  Repentance alone could give the impression that WE are the ones doing something to be saved; it could make it into a works-based idea of being saved. Or even that it is transactional, like Jesus did this, and we have to do this. So, do we do as Paul wrote, “go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means!” (Romans 6:1-2). What role then does repentance have?  In order to be saved in the first place we must realize that we have sinned. Even a little child can realize they are a sinner. Our realization of being a sinner and the pain and regret it has caused, leads us to realize we need a savior, and that salvation has already been provided for us (“while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” Romans 5:8). We are just receiving it by faith. The repentance is a profound change of mind about our current sorrowful, sinful state and the truth about Jesus Christ as Savior -  from unbelief to belief! 

 “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 6:23). 

We have all sinned: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). God is holy and perfect. He is also just. Even as sinners, we want to see justice done when people break “our standards”, meanwhile we’ve broken God’s perfect standards. And often, we can’t even live up to our own standards, let alone God’s…which is why we need a perfect Savior!  God’s love and His justice intersect perfectly in God the Son, Jesus Christ, dying on the cross for our sins. “He did it to demonstrate His justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Christ” (John 3:26).  God is both just and the justifier!  

When God created us to have free will, He knew it could not exist apart from His justice, either we would be puppets or there would be total disorder.  In 2020 in Seattle, a "police-free" zone was made on Capital Hill.  This community, born on subjective values like freedom from hierarchy with communal and cooperative living, quickly had it's own security leaders emerge and deteriorated into deadly violence.

I knew I was born again when I believed in Jesus as my Savior because, "The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children". (Romans 8:16),. But what does it mean to be born again? I thought about this for several months (although I should have prayed for wisdom based on James 1:5). Some answers came together slowly. I had always wondered about John 3:5, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit”. Based on the following verse in John 3:6 “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit”, I thought water meant natural birth and Spirit is being born of the Spirit. But what does that mean exactly? Was Jesus saying that aliens (!) couldn't be born again because they seemingly aren't born naturally?  That seemed unlikely in this particular conversation. Soon after, I came across one missing link! 1 John 3:9 says, “No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God.” In Strong’s concordance, this word seed is the same word used for sperm, implying offspring, that is used in 41 times in the New Testament. We are supernaturally reborn by the Spirit with God’s seed (“DNA”) when we believe in Jesus as our Savior.  Praise God!  

But, what about the "born of water" part Jesus talked about in John 3:5? I assume this whole chapter is so deep, and so layered, but In the Old Testament, water was used as for ceremonial washing of people or things. This washing symbolically cleansed things or sinful people before the presence of a holy God.  However, outward washing could never fully create a clean heart.  When Jesus came, He tells the woman at the well, He will give us Living Water (John 4).  Later in the New Testament, it also says that water is the Word, Jesus (Eph 5:26).  I love this picture. - think about the creation of the world.  God the Father is there with God the Son (the Word -Jesus) and the Holy Spirit is there hovering over the water (See Genesis 1 and John 1).  In 2 Corinthians 5:17 KJV, it says, "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.":  When you believe in Jesus as your Savior, YOU are now a new creature, a new creation, through the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit!