My friend, the subject of this letter, Jesus, is of immeasurable importance. Please take a deep breath, clear your mind of all distractions, and pay close attention to what I am about to teach you, for it is a challenging thing to comprehend. In fact, it is quite difficult to condense all that can be understood about Jesus into a single brief letter, so I urge you to consider this only a primer. If my teaching appeals to you at all, commit yourself to learning more through your study and curiosity. You will be richly rewarded for the time you spend discovering more about Jesus.
Now, on to the reason I am writing to you. You are a broken person living in a broken world and, as such, are constantly bombarded by the temptation of sin. In the exercise of your free will, you inevitably do the very things you ought not to do. Your sin renders you unclean and unholy in the sight of God, thus you are rightly separated from him. How is it, then, that a broken and unholy person can glorify a God who demands perfection in his creature? You may aspire to holiness, but sadly, you will never achieve it because you, as am I, are cursed with an inherited sin nature passed down to us through our disobedient forefathers, beginning with Adam. As much effort as you may invest in being good, you can never be good enough, for the weakness of the flesh will always fail you. Therefore, what to do? Friend, you need an advocate to represent you before God, and in fact, you have the perfect one in Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, our advocate, is your Savior. He is your Savior because only he, who is God himself on Earth in the form of man, is able to protect you from the just punishment you, a sinner, are due. Although born into a broken world, Jesus was not conceived by man. Thus, he had no sin nature, and without a sin nature he was able to obey God completely and with absolute perfection. Thus blameless because he violated not one of God’s commandments (was without sin), he stands before God on the merit of his righteousness. And in his unlimited and uncompromising love for you, knowing your weaknesses and inabilities, he gave himself as a willing sacrifice for the benefit of you, indeed for all men, to pay the penalty of sin so that you might live in Heaven in the presence of God where you will glorify him, just as intended. Wonderful! Yes, but how is this amazing thing accomplished?
If the wages of sin are death, and you and I, as sinners, are surely destined to die, what is the reward for living a life absent of sin? Life! Jesus, the lamb without blemish who was slain, defeated death, and is now in the company of God where he, stirred by his love for you, through grace (unmerited favor), extends his boundless righteous credit to cover your debt when you profess your belief that the sufficiency of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice is far more than enough to overshadow, indeed erase, your guilt as a sinner. Christ satisfied the wrath of God once and for all time. God is so pleased in the faith and work of Christ that his good pleasure overflows and reaches all men who cling to Christ as their hope for eternal survival. Yes, Christ died in this world so that dead men might live with him in the next. This is an invaluable offer, and I beg you to accept it.
Friend, it took me a long time to understand this, and it might for you, too. I pray that you spend time reading the Bible, praying, and fellowshipping with other believers so that what I have written to you may become more believable and irresistible. I pray this because it is my heart’s desire that we will enjoy God in Heaven together for eternity. Amen.
