For God So Loved...

What is the greatest gift that you have ever received? What is the first thing that comes to mind? All month long, we have been doing our best to help provide you with hope for the holidays, but we have saved the best for last! The greatest gift that any of us could ever receive is not something that can be bought or even something that we can hold, but for all who accept this gift, nothing will ever be the same.

What is the greatest gift of all? It has to be something that goes deeper than a momentary fulfillment or temporary pleasure. As people, we have a basic need for relationship. The Harvard Study on Human Development, a now over 80 year long-term study started in 1938, has shown that the key to human happiness is healthy relationships. It’s hard-wired into our DNA that we need consistent, healthy connection and interaction with others in order to live meaningful and happy lives. It’s just who we are. But, even deeper than our need for relationship with other people is our need for relationship with God.

Now, our atheist and agnostic friends would like to push back on this point, but we can prove it. Back in 1882, Friedrich Nietzshe posited the now famous quote: “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.” Nietzshe, a staunch atheist in his adult life, was not making this statement in triumph or pride, contrary to the way he is quoted today, but in despair. The quote continues, “How show we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?” He understood that in removing God as the absolute moral arbiter and the promises of eternal life as the supreme goal, that most people would fall to nihilism, losing meaning and purpose for life. Nietzshe’s answer to this problem was the future rise of the Ubermensh, or the super men, who would self-create and actualize morality and purpose for themselves. What he was actually saying was that, in removing God from the equation, that void must necessarily be filled, and it would be a logically and morally superior future iteration of man who would fill it. In effect, he believed that the psychological need for God is so great that, in His absence, men basically had to become God for themselves. The problem is, in putting his faith in a distant future version of man, Nietzshe didn’t actually believe that man had killed God or religion, instead he just created a new form of humanistic religion and a new God to believe in, and a lesser God at that. We cannot create our own purpose; it’s logically impossible. Your purpose is your reason for existence, meaning you would not exist without purpose or a reason for it. Our purpose pre-exist us, so it’s not something we can define or create for ourselves, but something we must learn and discover as it is revealed to us in order to it out.

So, we have this intrinsic, built in need for God and even more, to have relationship with Him. Great! But God is holy and perfect and we are not. The fact that God is perfect is actually a big problem for us if we want to have relationship with Him because His perfection requires that our imperfection be judged. When sin entered the world, it severed the relationship that humanity was able to have with our Creator and our greatest need could never again be met. Romans 6:23 tells us that the wages of sin is death. What each of us earns and deserves for our sin is actual death, but if we die separate from God then we are separated from Him for eternity. Existing for all of eternity without the hope of our greatest need ever being fulfilled. The word for this kind of existence is Hell. Without God, this is all we have to look forward. With the impossibility of living without sinning on our own and no hope of earning salvation, we were truly lost. This is where our greatest gift was delivered.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." - John 3:16-17

When we were at our most hopeless, Jesus came into the world and paid the penalty of death on our behalf. He took what we deserved so that we could have what we could never earn. We get to have what we truly need, what our souls yearn for, relationship with God! This is the greatest gift and one that you can receive right now!

If you want to enter into this relationship with God, it starts by simply putting your faith, your trust in what Jesus has done. When you believe that He is who He said He was – the son of God, the creator of the world – and that He alone has the ability to do what He said He would do – offer forgiveness for your sins by paying your debt with His sacrificially atoning death on the cross – you can begin to walk in this amazing gift of forgiveness and reconciliation.