What is the solution to our dilemma?
God loves us and so He sent his own Son, Jesus Christ, as a sinless man to reconcile humanity to Himself. What we couldn’t do because of our rebellion (sin), God did in Christ. Christ died on a criminal’s cross and took the legal penalty for our guilt enabling us to be forgiven. Jesus Christ, who had never broken God’s law, took the punishment for our guilt upon Himself (*see 1 Corinthians 5:14,15 & 21).
This amazing gift, however, is not automatically ours. We must make a deliberate choice to respond to God.

We must respond to God
God has provided the way for us to be reconciled to Himself and forgiven. However, this forgiveness is not automatic. We have to respond to God personally by doing two things. A person has to repent and then believe in what Christ has done.

Repenting
This means turning away from living for ourselves to live for God instead. In place of being self-directed, we become God-directed. Far from losing our personalities, we become the people God intended us to be.

Believing
This means trusting that when Jesus died on the cross He payed the penalty for our rebellion to forgive us and bring us back to God. Instead of trusting in our own self effort to gain a relationship with God, we rather trust in the perfect work of Jesus Christ.

How can I make this step to follow Jesus Christ? Continue...

* 2 Cor 5:14,15 For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

* 2 Cor 5:21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

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