[영어설교(english sermon)] Jesus Christ, Our Life

 

Jesus Christ,  Our Life

 

<John 1:1-4>

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.”

How Great Is Jesus Who Loves Us So Much That He Has Delivered Us from All Our Sins!

 

John chapter 1 describes Jesus as the Creator of the entire universe. If we were to compare ourselves to the boundless universe that God created, we would realize what small and dismal creatures we are. This is why we cannot thank God enough for being able to meet such great God. It was the greatest of all miracles. Even now, I think that it is the greatest of all miracles that I have met with God, who came by the gospel of the water and the Spirit.

Jesus was the Creator, who created this vast universe that spreads millions upon millions of light years wide. God has also prepared the eternal Truth and the true salvation, which are invisible to our eyes. God is truly an amazing God. God’s utmost work was creating humans, out of all other God’s creations, as His own children.

Yet, how could we not give thanks to God, when we were able to encounter such a great and marvelous God? God has accomplished such great works that are impossible for us to comprehend with our intelligence. The world that God has created is full of mysteries which are incomprehensible to the human mind. We cannot but help praise God, since we were able to meet with such a great God on our own discretion. We cannot help but praise God, when we look at the universe that is filled with many galaxies that are beyond our imaginations. The universe, which God has created, is magnificent. We are such small beings who are incomparable to God’s created world. Each person is no larger than a flake of dust in the eyes of God. Still, how could we not give thanks to God, when such small beings as we were able to meet with God, the Creator of this magnificent universe? With a heart full of gratefulness, I give my thanks to God once again.

However, it is a shame that there are so many people who are trying to meet with the great and holy God without having the gospel Truth of the water and the Spirit. It is absolutely impossible for us to meet with Jesus without first having faith in this true gospel. Also, it is impossible for us to receive the remission of sin without the gospel of the water and the Spirit.

Then, how is Jesus Christ able to meet with us humans? There is no other way through which God is able to meet with us except through Jesus, who became a human just like you and me. Jesus received the baptism from John the Baptist to take all our sins onto Himself at once, and He wholly blotted out all our sins once and for all by being crucified on the Cross. Through His baptism and crucifixion, Jesus made it possible for God to adopt us as His own children. In other words, there is no other means of salvation except the coming of God as our Savior, who has delivered us from all our sins once and for all. However, if God were to meet with us in His fundamental character, no sinner would have been able to escape the judgments accorded to their sins, for He is the most holy and solemn Judge. Because we were fundamentally sinners, we would have died if we were to stand before God’s holy light. Thus, for God to meet with us, He had to come to us in the flesh of man, just like us.

Our Lord Himself has thus come in the flesh of man so that He could meet with us and deliver us, who are weak and insufficient, from all our sins. In order to take the flesh and blood of a man, just like the bodies we possess, Jesus was born into this world through the Virgin Mary. Just as it is written, “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14), God has come to us in flesh and blood like ours to be with us. This promise was prophesized by the Prophet Isaiah over 700 years prior to Jesus’ birth. If our Lord had not lowered Himself to our humble level and approached us, you and I would have never been able to meet with the Lord. Our Lord had come to this world in the flesh of man, just like ours, to meet with us.