Good News For Today 21 – Paul Sohn – The Bridge Illustration.[i]
Hello, My name is David Hibbert, and I’ve got some good news for you!
Here’s another way that Paul Sohn explained the gospel – the good news of Jesus Christ.
We matter to God. He made us, and He wants to have a relationship with us”.
However, our problem is that we have rebelled against God. Both actively and passively, we have all disobeyed Him. And our sins have separated us from Him, and broken off our relationship with Him. So there is a great wall, or a great chasm, separating us from God.
Now, to varying degrees, most of us are aware of our distance from God. I know I was, and you probably know it also. So we start doing all kinds of things to try to get back to God, like being a helpful neighbor, paying our taxes, going to church, and giving money to charities.
There’s nothing wrong with these things, but the Bible makes it clear that none of them can earn us God’s forgiveness, or re-establish our relationship with Him.
All of our attempts to reach God always fall short. Romans 3:23 says, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
Because God is a holy, perfectly just God, the sins we’ve committed must be punished, and the penalty we owe is death, which means physical death, as well as spiritual separation from God for eternity, in a place called hell.
I admit that the picture looks pretty bleak. Apart from God, we are in deep trouble. We are entirely lost, and there is no way that we can save ourselves from eternal torment.
But the good news is that we matter to God. In fact, He loves us so much that He did for us what we could never do for ourselves. He provided a bridge over which we can find His forgiveness and restore our relationship with Him. He built that bridge by coming to earth as one of us, and dying on the cross to pay the death penalty we owed.
1 Peter 3:18 says, “For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God”.
Jesus Himself is our bridge, and His death on the cross for us formed the bridge that touches both sides of the chasm.
That is a picture of what the gospel is all about. And that’s what God wants each of us to understand.
But it’s not enough for us to just know about it or even to agree with it. We’ve got to act upon it. God wants us to move over to the other side of the bridge.
We do this by humbly admitting to God that we’ve rebelled against Him, and that we need His forgiveness and leadership. This simple act of trust and obedience results in our sins being forgiven and our debt to Him being paid. Our relationship with God is then firmly established, because we become immediately adopted into His family as His son and daughter.
So the good news is that God has made a bridge so that you can come back to Him, through the sacrificial death of His Son Jesus. The other good news is that you can cross the bridge today, by choosing to make Jesus to be your forgiver, leader, and friend. So, what are you going to do about the bridge that God created for you?
And that’s your Good News For Today!
[i] https://paulsohn.org/4-compelling-illustrations-to-share-the-gospel-to-your-unbelieving-friend/
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