Dear Friends,
I am Bertrand, and I am bearing a very important message for
you. But before I convey it, let me request you to read my letter with open
mind. Here is my reason for requesting you to read my letter with open mind:
https://www.mysaviourmylight.org/2020/02/how-great-price-people-are-ready-to-pay.html
I intend no harm because the message I convey is the Message of Freedom. It is one of the most important gifts from God to the mankind. Just consider the extent of the freedom that God granted to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden in which He placed them after creating them! Though He didn’t want them to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil, He did give them the ‘free will’ to eat that forbidden fruit. He asked them not to eat it because if they would eat it, they would die. He didn’t want them to die. But because He wanted them to follow His will by using their free will, He gave it in their hand to choose to obey Him and live eternally.
He didn’t force them to choose life! He didn’t impose His
will on the mankind. What’s important is that He never will impose His will on us.
This is because He is God indeed! He does not need to impose Himself on us to
prove that He is God.
Now, let’s consider why He gave such an extent of freedom to
the mankind. The thing is that God had created Adam in His image; therefore man
possessed divine nature. If God was not free, then the man He created in His
image also would not have been free! And if the man was not created to be
‘free’, then it would have meant that God’s creation was flawed. That surely
wasn’t the case. God’s creation was perfect; therefore Adam and Eve were
perfect. Perfection, according to Bible, must include freedom together with all
that is considered good.
Just consider a scenario in which a man would possess all
good qualities but was not free! His lack of freedom would have restricted the
workings of all other attributes which define goodness! Love, compassion, pity,
humility, holiness…All these good qualities would have been compromised without
freedom.
This point is very important: Lack of freedom would not have
compromised all that is considered bad in human nature. Adam and Eve had
nothing bad in their nature. As already stated before, God had created them
perfect. So, the lack of freedom would have compromised only the good that was
in their nature! Therefore, God gave ‘free will’ to Adam and Eve.
Sadly, Adam and Eve listened to the logic of the Devil,
which put wrong construction on God’s motive behind forbidding them to eat the
fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. He told them that God didn’t
want them to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil because if
they ate that fruit, they would be able to know both good and evil, and this
knowledge would make them equal to God. God didn’t want them to be His equal
and therefore He forbade them to eat that fruit.
The Devil very cleverly trapped them to shift their
attention from God’s instructions to his devilish logic. This is how Devil
always operates. He takes our attention off God and things Divine and settles
it on things diabolical.
Distracted thus, Adam and Eve used their ‘free will’ to
listen to Satan and disobey God. This choice led them to death from life. This
was what Satan actually wanted to accomplish. He wanted God’s creation to be
under bondage of sin, disease and death. Adam and Eve lost their freedom to
live their life. After eating the forbidden fruit their desire to live life
fully was compromised by all the sins that we see plaguing the world now.
The point I am making is this: God stands for freedom;
Satan stands for bondage. If you see your freedom compromised, know for sure
that it is the work of the Devil. It can never be the work of God.
Please note that God drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden of
Eden after they committed sin. The big reason for His taking this step against
Adam and Eve was that in the same Garden there was the Tree of Life. If the
fallen mankind or the sinful mankind would eat the fruit of the Tree of Life,
it would have terrible consequences for the mankind. It would have perpetuated
their sinful status. Perpetuation of their sinful status would have made their
situation very like that of Satan.
In other words, it would have made the mankind utterly
hopeless. They would have shared the same fate that Satan is destined for. God
did not want this to happen. He did not want His plan for the mankind to end
that way. It would have meant a kind of victory for the Devil. God showed that
He was invincible and the Devil was a defeated foe by coming up with a fresh
plan of salvation for the mankind. In due time we shall talk about this plan.
For now we shall conclude our discussion on freedom.
Now, after the fall of the mankind, the only way the mankind
can free itself is by knowing truth! It is written in the Gospel According to
St. John, chapter 8, verses 31 & 32:
“Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, “If you
abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth,
and the truth shall make you free.”
Jesus also emphasizes the need for freedom for the mankind.
Interestingly, He talks about the only way to achieve freedom being none other
than TRUTH. But the problem with knowing the truth is that we cannot know the
truth without being true ourselves. But the fact is that we are not true! We
are not true because we are sinful.
Another thing, if we want to know the truth, we cannot find
it anywhere outside God Himself. Truth comes from God and if we trace this
truth with tenacity, we invariably end up finding it in God. To put it plainly,
if we follow the truth, it inevitably leads us to God. If it does not lead
us to God, then it is not truth. Therefore, Jesus said that if we know the
truth, the truth will set us free. Only God can set us free. But the problem is
that we cannot know God! The reason why we cannot know God is that we are
sinful.
So, the main problem with us is this: We are
sinful. If we are set free from our sinfulness, then only we can become
righteous. But how can we become righteous?
In the Book of Romans in the Bible, chapter 6, verse 23, we
are told that the wages of sin is death. So if we commit sin, we must die. Now
if we die for our sins, will our death mean that we are free from the sin that
caused death to us?
Now, according to human justice, if a person suffers
the punishment of his sin, his sin no longer remains. This is because he has
already paid the price for his sin. If his sin is to remain even after bearing
the punishment for it, then he has to undergo punishment for that sin again.
But we do not punish a person twice for the same sin, do we?
But justice in the spiritual realm does not follow the
paradigm of earthly justice. In spiritual realm, if a person suffers the
punishment for his sin, it would not make him righteous. His sinful nature
still remains in him. So if we have to die for our sins, then we shall die for
our sins; but we shall die while still in possession of our sinful nature.
Death does not and cannot put an end to our sinfulness. So we die in our
sinfulness. And with our sinfulness we can never enter Heaven. Heaven is the
place where only God and good can exist. So, we cannot help ourselves in any way
to enter into the presence of God. God is so holy that nothing evil or unholy
can ever exist in His presence.
It is for this reason that we need Jesus. The very purpose
of Jesus’ life was to take upon Himself the sins of the world and to suffer
punishment for them. But that is not all! Jesus not only takes away our sins
from us, He also takes away our sinful nature! This is important. This is what makes His sacrifice unique.
Jesus’ body represented our
own body which housed both sin and sinfulness. When Jesus’ body was destroyed
on the cross, died and buried in the grave, it also indicated the end of our
sins and our sinfulness. On the third day, Jesus conquered death and rose to
life.
God gave the body of His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, as
a promise to the mankind - as a hope of glory that will mark our own existence
at the time appointed by Him. God has assured us that our sins are atoned for,
and, therefore, our sins are forgiven. He has also guaranteed that time would
come when He would give us the kind of glorified body that Jesus had after His
resurrection. Jesus is the proof of the veracity of God’s promise.
What does this mean? It means exactly this: If we accept
Jesus as our personal Savior, we have the promise that we already discussed above.
Our sins are already forgiven because of our acceptance of Jesus’ sacrifice.
And the sinful nature that still remains in us loses its power because of our
acceptance of Jesus. It is extremely important for us to understand this;
because it puts us in right standing with God.
What is there to understand is this: When we believe in
Jesus and receive Him, we achieve spiritual salvation. Please note that
with our spiritual salvation, the process of salvation actually starts. We are
not just our body. We are mind, body and spirit. And God will not allow any of
the three aspects of our existence to get destroyed. He will save us ‘whole’.
Our salvation starts with our spiritual salvation and concludes with the
salvation of our body that will utterly free us from our sinful nature
or sinfulness.
As a proof of our spiritual salvation, God sends His Holy
Spirit to dwell in us. This Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus. It is this
dwelling of Jesus’ Spirit in us that makes us righteous; that helps us fight
with the temptation to commit sin and overcome our sinful nature. We cannot
overcome our sinful nature by our own strength. But we, surely, can overcome it
with the help of the Holy Spirit in the same way that Jesus did.
This Holy Spirit helps us live according to the order of the
spirit and not according to the order of the body. In other words, we are
initiated into the spiritual order of things and assisted to continually grow
in it. In growing in spiritual order, our mind gets renewed and experiences
salvation. The more we grow into this spiritual order, the farther we move away
from the lusts of our eye and body and from the pride of life. So, it is a
process through which we attain to the spiritual maturity that God wants to see
in us.
One day is appointed when Jesus will come again to take us
with Him to the Kingdom of Heaven. On that day the dead will rise from death,
and all who will be alive at the time will see Jesus face-to-face. When both
the people who will rise from death and those who will be alive at that time
will see Him, in that very moment they will undergo complete change and will
acquire the image of Jesus.
In other words, we shall be like Jesus Himself! We shall
have glorified body that will be free from sinful nature. It is called the
‘salvation of the body’. With the salvation of the body, the process of
perfection will be concluded. At this juncture, our total transformation will
make us fit to be adopted by God as His sons and daughters. As His adopted sons
and daughters, we shall share all the things that God had given to Jesus, His
Son. But the most important thing for us is that we shall enter Heaven to live
in eternal peace and joy in the presence of God.
Dear Friends, just consider this! We shall be in the
presence of God! Yes! We shall see Him face to face! Yes! And the nature of our
worship will change into full experience and enjoyment of the Supreme Being of
God! Our worship will not be restricted to our attempt at pleasing God through
our worship. In Heaven the source of our joy will be the comprehensive
knowledge of God and living eternally in that knowledge in peace and joy that
cannot be grasped by human understanding nor described by human language.
Another thing, though we shall be in the presence of God, we
shall not die. This is because when we shall acquire the image of Jesus, we
shall exactly become like Jesus. But the question is, “Who and what Jesus
exactly was?” Of course, Jesus was a prophet but He was also a lot more than just
a prophet. He was and is the Son of God. Jesus did not have a human father. He
was conceived in Mary’s womb when the Spirit of God came upon her. Even you as
Moslem agree with the Christian in this respect. All that Mary did was to give
the Spirit of God the human shape! So Jesus was the Spirit of God in human
shape! That’s how He was and is the Son of God!
Jesus Himself often called Himself the Son of Man because He
had this flesh-and-blood existence. He had the flesh-and-blood existence in
order to offer it as a sacrifice for the sins of the mankind. Jesus never
committed any sin though He had flesh-and-blood existence; because He overcame
sin and sinful nature through the Spirit of God which is also called the Holy
Spirit.
Jesus’ body did have the capacity to commit sin and yet it
remained sinless because Jesus kept it under subjection to God’s will through
the Holy Spirit. That is the reason why Jesus made a perfect sacrifice for
atonement of our sins. Jesus never committed any sin nor did He die in sin.
Therefore, His death accomplished what our death never
could. As stated before, if we die for our sin, we may die for our sin but we
die in sin. We die in sin because we die while still in possession of our sinful
nature. So we are not liberated in death. Therefore, we cannot go to Heaven.
The only way we can go to Heaven is by accepting the fact
that Jesus died for our sins on the Cross, rose on the third day from death and
in His resurrection we have the hope of conquering death. We have to accept Him
as our personal Savior. He is the Way and the Truth and the Life. He is the
Door through which you pass from death to life.
BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR:
https://www.amazon.in/Bertrand-Hatia/e/B00W7E3BEO/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0
