The Bible On Trial

November 17, 2017

What do you do when you don't know what to do? Let's imagine that you have been asked to cook a turkey for the family Thanksgiving dinner, but you have never cooked a turkey in your life, and you don't know the first thing about how to do it so that the result doesn't end up giving everyone food poisoning, or killing someone. What do you do? Do you set off on your own, go to Google or the Foster Farm web site and just follow their directions, or do you ask someone that has experience in preparing a turkey to show you how to do it, so you can do it yourself?

What many people believe about Christianity and salvation is that Jesus came to earth to "cook the turkey for you, so you don't have to do it yourself". Jesus told Pilate, "For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice." (John 18:37) If Jesus had come to earth to accomplish salvation for "everyone that believes" then what would have been the point of Him testifying to anything, and especially about the Truth? All he would have needed to do would have been to "die for the sins of the world", and that would have been that; certainly teaching people to accomplish what He said that He came to do (that is, testify to the truth themselves) would have been wholly unnecessary for their own salvation.

Jesus came to earth to teach us the truth about salvation so that we could accomplish the same thing that He accomplished, that is, righteousness. Righteousness is accomplished by learning and living the words that Jesus brought to this earth from His Father. And when we learn to be obedient to those words just as was Jesus THEN we become righteous just as He is righteous, and THEN His sacrifice can apply to our lives, giving us the same eternal life that He has in Himself. Simple!