Refusing to come to Him

Q: If I do not believe in a Messiah and believe that God is there to guide us not save us, does that mean I don't believe in the Bible?

A: The short answer is "Yes." If you only believe God is there to "guide us not save us" then your conclusion was not derived from reading the Bible. Therefore, you don't believe the Bible. In fact, your statement is in direct contradiction to the words of Jesus Christ, Himself. Jesus said, "For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost (Luke 19:10)." The world is full of people that believe that God "guides us," but that we can decide what it is that guides us through life apart from Him. This is the main purpose behind most major religions in the world. They teach that all man needs is a set of rules, laws or principles to live by and, if we just adhere to them, we either get to heaven, become gods ourselves or some variation of the two. However, this is the lie of the devil. In the book of Genesis we read where the serpent deceived Eve. The serpent said to Eve, "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil (Genesis 3:5)." Knowing good and evil? Isn't this the foundation of why people say we only need God to "guide us?" If we just know good and evil we can live a righteous life and, perhaps, change the world. But, you see, this is the lie of satan. We all want, in essence, to be like God and know good and evil. Therefore, we feel all we need is to figure out how do that. And there is an endless supply of resources geared towards helping us meet that goal. Between religion, self help gurus and our own understanding, we never run out of options to try. And if one fails us, we just go to the next. The problem to that is who is right and who is wrong? If you have no agreed upon standard of truth to fall back on, eventually, all you are left with is chaos.

One need to look no further than the United States of America to illustrate this problem. This country was founded on what is commonly referred to as a "Judeo-Christian" ethic. What that means is that the Founding Fathers of this country used the Bible as their "guide" in which to build this country. And, I will not argue that by doing so they created, in my opinion, the greatest country this world has ever seen. However, in the midst of doing so, we still had some major problems in this country. Namely, such things as racism and slavery. Thankfully, through reliance on the Bible, we have been able to overcome slavery and much of the effects it has had on this country. But, one has to ask, "why, with using the Bible, God's Word, as a guide, do so many problems still persist in this country and the world?" Regardless of where you look there are still plenty of examples of man's inhumanity towards man. The simple answer is that sin exists in the world. And one thing that a guide cannot do is eliminate this problem. As I stated earlier, Jesus said that He came to save that which is lost. Man's problem is that he has been separated from God because of sin. "Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned (Romans 5: 12)." When Eve and, more importantly, Adam were deceived into eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they died spiritually and allowed sin to enter the world. Basically, they didn't believe God and rebelled against Him. Therefore, God, who had breathed His life into Adam and Eve, removed His life from them. And everybody who has been born into this world since that time is born in the image of Adam, spiritually dead to God, but alive to the world. Another byproduct of Adam and Eve's rebellion against God is that sin and death are in the world. Whether it be the previously mentioned sins of racism and slavery, other sins like lying, stealing and cheating, or natural phenomenon like destructive tornadoes, hurricanes and earthquakes, they are all a result of sin. There is no guide to stop all that.

The solution God has offered to the problem of sin is life in His Son Jesus Christ. After God removed His life from Adam and Eve, following their sin, He desired to indwell His creation once again. In order for mankind to be aware of their sin and their need for His life, God gave us a "guide" to show us that need; the Mosaic Law. Part of the Law is the Ten Commandments. Many people use these commandments as a guide for living. However, God gave us the Law because "through the law we become conscious of sin (Romans 3:20)." I have heard it stated that the Law was God's contribution to man's best effort to be like Him. When we try and live up to God's standards, the Law, or our own laws, religion, we fail miserably. And that is exactly why God gave it to us. "So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith (Galatians 3:24)." We fail miserably because of sin. No matter how hard we try to be like God we cannot. It is by recognizing our inability to live up to God's standard that we then turn to Jesus Christ and His ability. Before God could indwell His creation again, He had to deal with the sin that caused Him to remove His life to begin with. "For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God (1 Peter 3:18)." Jesus Christ, being God in the flesh, is the only man who had a life to give that would satisfy God as payment for our sins. Because the death of Christ took away the sins of the world from the eyes of God for all eternity, God was now able to offer His life as free gift, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, to all who accept Him by faith. "For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life (Romans 5:10)!" Reconciled to God, our debt paid in full, by the death of Jesus Christ. Saved, rescued from eternal separation from God in Hell, through the resurrected life of Jesus Christ.

There you have it. The Gospel of Jesus Christ; sin, death, forgiveness, life! While Jesus was alive, He had an encounter with some Jews who thought they were making themselves righteous before God by using the Bible, more specifically the Old Testament, as a guide to living. Jesus thought differently. "You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life (John 5: 39-40)." We don't need the Bible to guide us. We need God to guide us from within. He does that through His indwelling Holy Spirit, His life, which can only be received through accepting Jesus Christ as our Savior. Once we have received Christ we are guided from within, by the Holy Spirit of God, not from the outside through the law or any other guides. If the Bible guides us in anything it is by leading us to Christ. The Bible is a love letter, to all mankind, testifying about His Son Jesus Christ and the offer of salvation we all can have in Him. "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son (John 3: 16-18)." If you read the Bible, don't read it simply as a guide for your life, but read it as a guide to a Life. Because you don't need rules for living, but you need to be saved from eternal death by accepting eternal life in Christ Jesus.