To know Him is to have relationship with Him. Sometimes we talk about ‘becoming a Christian’, getting ‘saved’ or ‘born again’. All of these simply mean starting a relationship with Jesus. Let’s look at how you can do that.
Here are six verses from the Bible you need to understand.
1. All have sinned; all fall short of God’s glorious standard. (Romans 3:23) God has a standard by which we must live, and failing to live up to this standard is sin. God is perfect and His standard is perfection. None of us can attain this therefore we all have sinned.
2. The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23) We have all sinned so we all deserve the punishment for sin; where there is a crime there must be punishment. God’s system has one punishment for sin: death.
3. And just as it is destined that each person dies only once and after that comes judgment… (Hebrews 9:27) We get one chance at life; the decisions we make on earth have eternal consequences. Once we die, we are judged on what we have done with our lives. The only thing that will save us from being condemned is a relationship with Jesus.
4. God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ. (2 Corinthians 5:21) The good news is that Jesus came to take the punishment for our sin. He lived a perfect life, which is something we will never do. He couldn’t be punished for His own sin because He didn’t have any. His punishment was entirely for us.
5. If we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from every wrong. (1 John 1:9) Just because Jesus died doesn’t mean all of this happens automatically. We have to recognize what He has done for us and ask Him to forgive us for our sin. When we do this, He will forgive us and we will be made clean in God’s sight.
6. Those who listen to my message and believe in God who sent me have eternal life. They will never be condemned for their sins, but they have already passed from death into life. (John 5:24) If we respond to the message of what God has done, through Jesus, we will have new life. This new life will go on forever, it is eternal. We have left our sin, and all the death that goes with it, for an amazing new life in God!