If you declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.~Romans 10:9
As part of his theory of Special Relativity, Albert Einstein discovered one of the most famous equations of physics: 
. Now, while most of us are familiar with it, I think that it is safe to say that very few of us can adequately explain the detail behind this little equation. Indeed, people go to school for years taking grueling courses in higher mathematics and in physics to understand the ramifications and proper usage of this simple little formula. What is striking about this formula, as well as the other important and ground breaking scientific equations such as gravity or Newton's Second Law of Mechanics (F = ma), is that while they are complex in their application they are at the same time elegantly and beautifully simple.
This is the way that God has consistently revealed Himself to us through nature. He has designed a universe for us that is at the same time infinitely complex and elegantly simple. What a child can understand in principle in a day, a scholar could study in detail for an entire lifetime.
It should come as no surprise that what God has revealed to us in His Word is no different than what He has revealed to us in nature. Scholars and Theologians over the past two millennia have studied and dissected every detail of God's Word. Literally millions of sermons have been preached on it, books written on it, classes taught on it and yet we have yet to truly scratch the surface of what it contains. In the midst of all this complexity is the elegantly simple message of the whole thing.
Many people spend their whole lives diving into the detail of the bible and completely miss the simplicity of this message. Others look at the bible, try to dive right into the details like a child diving right into a calculus class. They get frustrated, convinced that God would have made it simpler, and give up on God.
The simple message of God's word is captured in the story of the thief on the cross. Jesus was crucified next to two thieves. One of them mocked Him, but the other confessed that he deserved his fate and he confessed Jesus as Lord. He asked that Jesus remember him when He came into His kingdom. Jesus' response to this man who had never done any of the "religious" things that we expect today, who was not baptized, who did not take the Lord's supper, who did not go to religious school, who was a confessed criminal deserving of death on a cross, to this man Jesus said "Truly I say to you, today you shall be with me in paradise." (Luke 23:43).
There is also the story of a man who goes to find laborers for his vineyard. He hires some men early in the morning and agrees to pay them a good amount. He later finds other workers, and later still more, until the end of the day. When the day is over he gathers all the workers in order to pay them their wages starting with those that he called last (who worked for only an hour) and going to those whom he had called first (who worked all day). He paid them all the same amount, a fair wage for a full day's work (Matthew 20:1-16).
The simple message of the bible is that God loves you more than you can possibly comprehend and He is seeking you. He has been seeking you all your life. Jesus never stops calling you and will never reject you if you will only heed his call. All that respond to His call receive the same reward of eternity in paradise with God Himself in the flesh. There is nothing that you have done that is too bad or that disqualifies you. An entire lifetime of rejecting Him will be forever washed away in an instant. From that moment on Jesus Himself will become your personal teacher and tutor. He will personally explain all of those things that seem so complicated now.
It is as simple as this: Confess + Believe = Salvation. Like the theories and equations of Einstein, the practical details of this equation can take a lifetime to explore, but just as we would expect from God, the equation that describes it all is elegantly and beautifully simple.
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. ~John 3:16
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.