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Father" (John
14:9).
But God is
glorified and therefore is " un–
seeable" by human beings.
Today God is working through
the vehicle of His Holy Spirit, and
He reveals His will to us through the
pages of the Bible. Our job is to find
out what God's will is and gel in
harmony with it. The rewards for
doing so come mainly at the
end ot
this lite when the saints are resur–
rected (Luke
14:1 4).
However, Christ Himself stated
that many Christians can expect
definite blessings in this lite. He
said : "There is no one who has left
house or brothers or sisters or
mother or father or children or
lands, for my sake and for the gos–
pel, who will not receive a hun–
dredfold now
in this time,
houses
and brothers and sisters and moth–
ers and children and lands [as
members of God's Church], with
persecutions, and in the age to
come eternal lite" (Mark
10:29-30).
And the book of Proverbs is full of
cause-and-effect maxims showing
the benefits of wise and righteous
behavior.
Nonetheless. in a purely physical
sense, Christians live lives pretty
much like everyone else in today's
world. Time and chance happen to
all men (Eccl.
9: 11 ).
God causes
the rain to fall on the just and on the
unjust (Matt.
5:45).
We experience
sickness, accident and death just
like everyone else. lt is only at the
end of lite that God "separates the
sheep from the goats" (Matt.
25:31-
32).
A Christian should be willing to
obey God whether God intervenes
to provide for him or not. Shadrach,
Meshach and Abednego were will–
ing to be thrown into the fiery fur–
nace rather than yield to idolatry–
whether God protected them or not
(Dan.
3:17-18).
Also, the Bible reveals that God
hears the prayers of those who
obey Him (John
9:31 ).
But sins cut
us off from God (lsa.
59:1-2).
We
are told : "Behold, the Lord's hand
is not shortened, that it cannot
save, or his ear dull, that it cannot
hear: but your iniquities have made
a separation between you and your
God, and
your sins have hid his
tace from you so that he does not
hear. "
Perhaps there is a con-
The
PLAIN TRUTH July 1977
nection between this verse and
your statement that your prayers
were not answered, even though
you quoted Bible references. Or
perhaps you were not praying in
accordance with God's will (James
4:3).
Another question you might ask:
Have you really been willing to re–
pent and change your lite befare
God? Have you "sought first the
kingdom of God," or have you
been seeking blessings for yourself
first? (See Matthew
6:25-33.)
Heaven is not a magic lantern
containing a genie called " God"
who can be summoned to grant
every wish. The Christian is not pri–
marily out to get from God; he is
concerned with pleasing God no
matter what. He seeks to glorify
God, not the self (John
7:18).
A good life is not to be found by
ignoring God and the Bible. Quite
the contrary. By acknowledging
God and obeying His will as it is re–
vealed in the Bible, one may have a
joyful, fulfilling, abundan! lite now
through the power of God's Holy
Spirit, and look forward to a reward–
ing eternity in the future.
Q
"The statement 'Jesus died for
everyone's sins' is constantly
being used by those in the Christian
religion. l'm curious about the rea–
soning behind this. How can killing
Ch rist possibly be linked with the for–
giveness of all of our sins? For one
thing, it was the gruesome murder of
the greatest inhabitant that the earth
has ever known . Secondly, it was
clearly a breaking of the sixth com–
mandment, 'Thou shalt not kili.' Why
do people think that this horrendous
murder is a basis for forgiveness of
thei r own sins?"
Rocky N.,
Grandview, Missouri
A
When God created the uní–
verse He set certain in–
exorable moral and spiritual laws in
motion. When a human being
breaks one of those laws, he has
committed a sin. 1John
3:4
defines
sin as "the transgression of the
law." Once an individual has
sinned in any way, shape or form,
he is immediately guilty of breaking
God's law, and the penalty for that
lawbreaking is death (Rom.
6:23).
All human beings have sinned
and come short of the glory of God
(Rom.
3:23).
All of us, like Adam,
have thus come under the death
penalty for sin. As the apostle Paul
wrote in Romans
5:12: " ...
sin
carne into the world through one
man (Adam] and death through sin,
and so death spread to all men be–
cause all men sinned."
But God does not want any of us
to perish (11 Pet.
3:9).
Nonetheless,
in arder to give us freedom to
choose between good and evil–
free moral agency-so we could
have the opportunity to develop the
kind of godly character He's look–
ing for in His children, He had to
make us capable of sinning. So
God carne up with a plan whereby
we could sin, suffer and learn from
the consequences, and afterward
escape the resulting death penalty.
This is where Christ's death in
our stead fits into the picture. Christ
was the Creator of the universe, our
earth and all human lite. (For more
on this, send for the free reprint ar–
ticle "Who- What-Was Jesus Be–
fare His Human Birth?" ) His divine
lite was worth more than the lives of
all humanity down through the
ages: therefore His death could
atone for the sins of all mankind. In
other words, He could die in place
of all who have sinned .
So while " the wages of sin is
death," the " free gift of God is eter–
na! lite in Christ Jesus our Lord "
(Rom.
6:23).
Any human being who
repents
ot
his sins and accepts
Jesus Christ as his personal Savior
is no longer under the penalty
ot
the law. Romans
8:1-4, 11
reads:
"There is therefore now no con–
demnation for those who are in
Christ Jesus. For the law of the
Spirit
ot
lite ... has set [us] free
from the law of sin and death. For
God has done what the
law ... could not do: sending his
own Son in the likeness
ot
sintul
flesh ... he condemned sin . . . in
arder that the just requirement
ot
the law might be fulfilled in us, who
walk not according lo the tlesh but
according to the Spirit. ... lt the
Spirit of him who raised Jesus
trom
the dead dwells in you, he who
raised Christ Jesus from the dead
will give lite to your mortal bodies
also through his Spirit which dwells
in you ."
o
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