So you want to know what happened to the baby chicks I hatched? I moved them out to the garage when they were about a week old. They’re in a good-sized box with a light hanging over it for warmth. Little chicks look cute but soon that fuzz starts being replaced with little feathers. And where does the fuzz go? All over the house! It shouldn’t come as any surprise that I was strongly encouraged by Diann to move the chicks out of the house.

I spent most of my last letter focusing on the bad news of how we’re all alienated from God because of our sinfulness. All I had time to do was hint at the good news that God’s done something about it. This letter contains the good news!

God mounted the greatest rescue effort of all time and eternity when Jesus came into the world as a baby born in a stable located in the village called Bethlehem. If you read carefully the four Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life you’ll come away with the distinct impression that Jesus saw the cross as His ultimate destiny. A well-known defense attorney said, "Jesus is the person I would like to have defended. I would have relished the opportunity to defend someone who was completely innocent of all charges and a victim of religious persecution. However, because of His mission here, He would have undoubtedly declined."

Jesus was certainly a great teacher, moral leader and miracle worker. But by His own account His true mission and achievement were His death and resurrection. Why?

Our inherent sense of justice demands that sin cannot go unpunished. Society won’t tolerate for long a judge in our judicial system who consistently lets murderers go free. God’s sense of justice far exceeds that of our own, because He’s perfect. Our sinfulness deserves eternal punishment before such a holy God.

But God is also a loving God. This put God in what we would see as a dilemma. How could He maintain His holiness and also express love by establishing a permanent relationship with sinful human beings? His solution? Substitute His own Son, Jesus Christ, to die in our place. The theologians’ technical term for this is "substitutionary atonement." He atoned for our sins by substituting Himself for us.

I recall the story in which a commercial plane crash on the east coast left many survivors floundering in frigid water. Rescue helicopters kept throwing a line to a man but he kept handing it to those around him so they could be rescued. Eventually the cold water caused him to drift into unconsciousness and he went under. The man gave his life for others. It was the greatest of sacrifices. Jesus Christ did the same thing for us!

God did for us what we can’t do for ourselves: made it possible for us to be right with Him. A right relationship with God is a gift from Him, not an achievement of ours. Salvation is received, not earned. If there were any conceivable way we could get to God by our own effort, the sending of Jesus to the cross would have been unnecessary. God would have used any option other than the death of His own Son. But there was no other option. Christ had to die for us if we were to be able to live in relationship with God.

The gift of God’s forgiveness offered through Jesus Christ is just that: a gift. That means we are free to accept or reject it. God won’t impose a personal relationship on us in this life and an eternity with Him in His heaven. The relationship must be voluntary

on our part because love can’t exist without the freedom not to love. God wants our relationship with Him to be based on love, and that means we must have the freedom not to want a relationship with Him. No one can impose love on someone and still have it be love -- not even God.

We can be forgiven by God, have a relationship with Him, and have His heaven as our ultimate destination, but we have to want it. The offer is open to anyone but can only be given to those who accept it.

I have some more thoughts on this subject, but they’ll have to wait until I can write again. There’s only about an hour of daylight left and the lawn needs mowing.

A fellow seeker after truth,
Dave