The Bridge
We matter to God. He made us and He wants to have a relationship with us.
We have rebelled against God. Both actively and passively we have all
disobeyed Him. And our disobedience has seperated us from Him, and broken off
the relationship.
To varying degrees, we are all aware of our distance from God. And so we try
to find ways to get back to Him, whether by doing good works, or attending
religious services, or exploring spiritual things like the New Age or the
occult. But the Bible makes it clear none of these things can restore that
relationship with Him. Our attempts will always fall short.
Furthermore, the sins we have committed need to be punished and the penalty we owe is death,
which means physical death as well as spiritual seperation from God in eternity.
At the moment the picture looks pretty bleak. However 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 it by coming to
earth as one of us and dying on a cross to pay the death penalty we owed. The
bridge is the cross.
That represents the central message of the Bible. Thats what God wants us all
to understand. But its not enough to just know about this or even agree with it.
We've got to act upon it. God wants us to move over to the other side.
We do that by humbly admitting to God that we've rebelled against Him and need His
forgiveness and leadership. That simple act of trust and obedience results in
our sins being pardoned and our debt being paid. Our relationship with God is
firmly re-established because we are immediately re-adopted into His family.
Some final questions to consider:
-does every section of the illustration make sense?
-are there any sections that you want to discuss further?
-where in the drawing are you?
-do you want to cross the bridge?
The original web page can be visited at http://quis.qub.ac.uk/qubcu/cu/evmod2.htm
