Grace and peace to you from our Lord Jesus Christ. I hope to share my story with you so that it might bless you in the same way it blessed me. This post shares my background, my faith question that kept me from accepting Jesus as my Lord and how He reached me with answers that convinced me.
I grew up attending a small town Methodist Church with my father. He was faithful to serve and encouraged me to do the same. I was baptized as a baby, attended Sunday school, and was confirmed in the Methodist Church. I thank my father for leading me, although I wasn’t thankful at the time. I guess I was the typical kid who resented the precious weekend time I had to spend in boring church services listening to sermons I didn’t understand. However, I’m sure that some truth sank in whether I wanted it or not.
My mother was not a Christian, following other gods and pursuing a very different path from my father. I remember my mother taking me to the home of the Methodist Church pastor and challenging whether I should be confirmed. She worried that confirmation would prevent me from pursuing my own path to whatever faith I wanted. She felt that I was too young to make an informed decision and was being coerced into a faith that I really didn’t understand or believe. She wasn’t wrong. As I entered High School, I began to question Christianity and approached my mother for alternatives.
In college, I abandoned my faith walk and declared myself an agnostic. Now I realize that was a cop-out, but then it felt like I was taking a higher intellectual journey. College life encouraged me to pursue my engineering degree, school friendships, and activities with no time for faith or religion. That changed when I met my current wife. She was a faithful catholic and, to spend as much time with her as possible, I attended church with her. That’s when God began to touch my heart and encourage me to explore my faith.
A few years later, we were married and my sweet wife encouraged me to explore my faith walk. We attended church regularly as I continued to resist the full call to Jesus. I continued to attend church in order to be with my new wife but held back a full commitment because I had two major questions:
- Why did Jesus need to suffer such a horrible death?
- What have I done in my life that required such an extreme sacrifice?
As I seriously began to explore the life of Jesus, I became more and more convinced that He was unique. His teachings were compelling and inconsistent with any other philosophy I had studied. He lived a life that was blessed with wisdom, compassion, healing, and truth. Nothing he did seemed to justify the terrible death he suffered. Worse yet, the church taught that his death was God’s plan so that I could be saved. It seemed all too extreme. If God planned for Jesus to die, and in that horrible way, what kind of God is He? Certainly, nothing I had ever done justifies such a terrible sacrifice. These are the key questions that nagged me. Also, even as a small boy, I worried about “giving my life to Jesus” because I didn’t trust what He would do with it. What if He sent me to the middle of nowhere to be a missionary to tribesmen or something? That was not my idea of a good time.
My wife and I continued attending new churches whenever we would move for my new jobs. Each new city brought us new churches and new experiences but those key questions still nagged me and made me continue to hold back full commitment. Then came a visiting pastor.
We were attending a Baptist church for a number of years, with me still holding back, but continuing to serve and openly learn more about Christ and God. Then came a service from a visiting pastor. I had never seen this pastor before, but occasionally, our church would serve as host to traveling pastors who would be given the pulpit as an opportunity for the congregation to support that pastor’s mission. This pastor was sent to this church on this day just for me. He was a young man, wearing the obligatory grey suit, holding a bible that he waved and referenced during his sermon and walking from side to side of the altar; largely ignoring the pulpit. He started with Adam and Eve. He explained that God created the perfect place for Adam and Eve to live with Him in the Garden of Eden. They had all they needed and lived in harmony with the rest of creation. God had only one rule — don’t eat the fruit from the tree of good and evil (Gen 2:16-17). Everything else was theirs to enjoy. Adam and Eve were God’s first creation of mankind and they communed with Him every day. Then, they sinned and everything changed for them. What I never before realized was that everything changed for me, too.
After they ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they committed the first sin. Scripture says that, with the first sin, they discovered that they were naked and were ashamed. To cover them, God carried out the first sacrifice for their sin; He clothed them with the skin of an animal. God expelled Adam and Eve and cursed them and the land for their sin. Then, Cain and Abel, Adam and Eve’s children, committed the next sin. Cain and Abel each offered their sacrifice to God. However, Cain decided to offer fruit of his hands (grain) rather than the fruit of God’s creation (blood of an animal). God accepted Abel’s sacrifice but not Cain’s. In jealousy, Cain killed Abel (Gen 4:3-10). This sets the clear requirement for sin; the blood of an innocent to atone for sin.
The next sacrifice example that the pastor explained was Abraham and Isaac. God told Abraham to sacrifice his son as a test of Abraham’s faith. Isaac and Abraham started on their journey to Mt. Moriah and Isaac without an animal to sacrifice. Isaac thought that was strange and asked Abraham “father, where is the sacrifice?” (Gen 22:7) Abraham answered “God will provide the sacrifice.” (Gen 22:8) When they arrived, Abraham took out the knife to slay his only son and God stopped him (Gen 22:10-12). God said that it was clear that Abraham was faithful but that God would provide the sacrifice with a nearby Ram that was caught in a thicket (Gen 22:13). This Ram served as a sacrifice that would bless Abraham and all his people (Gen 22:16-18). This sacrifice continued with the Jewish people as they wandered through the desert and after they entered the promised land. The sacrifice was two fold on Yom Kippur. First, an unblemished lamb was slain and the blood from the lamb is sprinkled on the ark of the covenant by the high priest. Second, a priest lays hands on the head of a scapegoat to transfer the sins of all the people onto the lamb which is then taken outside the city and abandoned; thereby removing the sins from the people (Lev 16:7,11,15-16,21-22).
The next sacrifice story that the guest pastor shared was Jesus. Scripture refers to the Messiah (Jesus) as the lamb who was slain (Rev 13:8), and who takes away the sin of the world. This sacrifice is meant to atone for the sins of the whole world (John 1:29), not just an individual, or a family, or a people, but all the sin of the whole world. Jesus served as the scapegoat (Isaiah 53:6) since he was crucified outside the city and as the lamb who was slain – fulfilling both requirements for sacrifice. Not just that, but He is the son of God; a most perfect sacrifice to remove all sin for all time from the world. Scripture states that His sacrifice is once and for all and completes the requirement for sacrifice forever (2 Cor 5:21).
Adam and Eve are the progenitors of Cain, Abel and the rest of mankind. With the line of Adam comes the line of sin against God. All decedents of Adam must atone for their sin to reconcile themselves with God. This first happened for Adam and Eve, then for their family (Cain and Abel), then for the whole community of Jews (Abraham) and finally for the whole world when God sacrificed his only son for us all.
That visiting pastor explained that Jesus sacrifice wasn’t just about the sins that I committed but rather that He was the only perfect sacrifice that could take me out of my family line of sinners (Adam). Jesus is both of the family of man (through Mary) and the family of God (immaculate conception). He is the only one with the perfect sinless lineage that joins to our lineage of sin who is able to be a sacrifice once, for all, so that we can be reconciled with our creator. He was born of man and yet never sinned; the perfect, spotless lamb of God (Hebrews 9:11-14).
Now I had my answers. God’s plan, from the Garden of Eden, was to reconcile his creation with Himself through Jesus (1 Pet 1:19-21). He knew what would happen with his creation before they sinned and He knew that His plan for forgiveness of sin would be perfect. It also isn’t just about my sins that Jesus gave his life but it was about transporting me from the family of sin in Adam to the family of God through Jesus. When I accept Jesus as my savior, I become Jesus’ brother and a child of God; the only way that I can be reconciled with God (John 1:12). It all made sense and that’s why I believe that guest pastor was sent on that day, just for me.
If you ever attended a Baptist Church, you know that they reliably hold an altar call; the time at the end of the service when people can come to the altar and give their lives to Jesus if they haven’t already. I can tell you that I sprung to my feet and walked all the way from the back of the large church pews all the way down to that altar on that day. I couldn’t help myself because I was simply responding to what God had done for me. My mother was right that I needed to find my way to understand my faith. I’ve never been the same.