God exists. He has always existed. He even predates Time, because He created time. He created everything known and unknown, visible and invisible. This includes Life and all the laws that govern Life and the universe that contains it.

This is the only reasonable, logical argument for why anything exists, that one super-natural Being created it. No other theory accounts for the beginning of everything … or for what happened before The Beginning.

This Creator-God, who self-existed before time began, had forever enjoyed a relationship with Himself, for although He is one God, He is also three Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

This God is worthy of all glory and honor and worship, so to extend the joy of glorifying Himself, He created the universe and Life to inhabit it. This includes everything we see in the natural realm and don’t see in the spiritual. This includes angels and gravity and stones and worms. This includes us.

God created the first man differently than any other creation. Rather than speaking Adam into existence as He did with light, dry land, and plants, God actively crafted man in his own image from the dust of the newly created Earth. He then breathed into him the breath of life. God then took a bone from Adam’s side and created Eve. and to these first humans, God gave nearly everything!

Included with this gift of life and the world was the freedom to choose, for among all the plants that God had planted was one forbidden tree. God told Adam that he could eat of any fruit except that one, for if he disobeyed and ate, he would surely die.

One created angel who had himself chosen to disobey God approached Eve as a serpent to discredit God and tempt her to disobey. Twisting God’s clear command, Satan convinced her to eat the fruit, and she then convinced Adam to do the same. With this choice was born sin, and thus was killed humanity’s close relationship with God.

Sin now separated mankind from God. Sin cursed their souls and cursed their lives. It cursed the world. Their disobedience and separation now continue from father to child, generation after generation, an inheritance of death and separation.

Already, God had prepared a place of eternal punishment for Satan and the other angels who had rebelled, a place of torment called Hell. Now with man’s sin, we too are destined for this terrible place, from birth, because a holy God cannot allow sin his presence.

God did not leave humanity hopeless, however, for with this first sin, God showed mercy and grace. In mercy, He spared the lives of Adam and Eve. In grace, He sacrificed an animal to take the punishment these people deserved, showing that sin deserves a payment in blood.

God also cursed Satan, promising that one day the woman’s heir would come to crush his head. Thus, from the very first sin, God gave humanity hope. Ultimate victory over Satan, sin, and death was promised, and it would come in the form of a human Child, the Messiah.

From that point on, God related to humanity differently, close and caring yet relationally separated from us because of sin. The following generations rebelled even further, and God punished them, yet always He guided those who trusted Him, calling men and blessing a nation through whom the promised child would come.

He communicated to his people and to the world through his prophets, servants who spoke and wrote God’s law and heart and foretold of the coming Messiah. The final messenger was John the Baptist who’s God-given mission was to prepare the way for the Messiah, Jesus Christ. Of Jesus, John said, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!”

Jesus was born as a human child, through the miraculous conception of God the Son in the womb of a virgin. Thus, both fully God and fully man, He lived as the perfect bridge to span the gulf between God and humanity. Perfect, because without a human father, Jesus had no sin, and as God, He could not sin.

At the time chosen by God, He sent His Son to live the life we couldn’t and ultimately to die on a bloody cross, the Lamb of God sacrificed for the sins of mankind. With this gift, God showed both mercy and grace. In mercy, He offers to spare our souls from Hell. In grace, He sacrificed his Son to take the punishment we deserve.

Death could not hold Jesus, though, and three days following his victory over Sin and Satan on the cross, He rose from the dead, bringing final victory over Death as well. This wonderful sacrifice and immeasurable victory are now available as a free gift to anyone who will receive it. All that is required is belief that it’s true (faith) and confession that it’s true for you, a sinner who needs saving (repentance).

The Bible promises that “Whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved” and that “by grace we are saved through faith, not by works.” Jesus also promises that, to the one who trusts in Him, He will give His Holy Spirit to dwell in that person’s life and to seal his soul forever. It’s a glorious rescue, to be saved from Hell and adopted as a child into God’s family! Do you believe it?

©2022 E.T.

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