May I introduce you?

“I love you so much that I would even sacri­fice my life for you” is how the per­son I would like to intro­du­ce to you here descri­bes hers­elf. And the spe­cial thing is that she does this wit­hout any­thing in return. Even if they are not loved back. Is that pos­si­ble? That seems pret­ty unrea­li­stic. Of cour­se, many peo­p­le talk about it and pro­mi­se you the blue sky. But when it real­ly comes down to it? When it gets real­ly serious? Are you faced with the choice of saving your own life or that of the other per­son (who may not even like you)? I real­ly got to know this per­son and expe­ri­en­ced that he real­ly meant it: His name is Jesus. May­be you’­ve alre­a­dy heard of him. May­be you had an idea of him or wro­te him off as a nice guy from the day befo­re yes­ter­day. But may I invi­te you to get to know him again wit­hout reser­va­tions? Of cour­se, it makes a huge dif­fe­rence whe­ther you only hear a few things about him or get to know him per­so­nal­ly. But more on that later. First of all, here are a few points about why I think he real­ly is “love per­so­ni­fied”:

• He ful­fil­led his own pro­mi­se by sacri­fi­ci­ng his life for us humans.
• he still stands by his many pro­mi­ses today
• He always has an open ear and ans­wers our pray­ers.
• He does­n’t turn his back on us even when we do.

1. he ful­fil­led his own pro­mi­se and sacri­fi­ced his life for us humans.

It was not unex­pec­ted for him. He was not the vic­tim of a con­spi­ra­cy or the ide­als he pre­a­ched. He deli­bera­te­ly sacri­fi­ced his life for you and me. But why? Becau­se it was the only way we could have a rela­ti­onship with God, our Crea­tor, again. But why was this so important to him? Why on earth would we need a rela­ti­onship with God? (quite apart from the ques­ti­on of whe­ther he exists at all. You can find out more about this here) Becau­se we humans live in a world that has renoun­ced God. We humans have con­scious­ly or uncon­scious­ly tur­ned our backs on him. And we see the effects of this in the news, around us and, if we are honest, in our­sel­ves: Sel­fi­sh­ness, stri­fe, bad thoughts, bro­ken rela­ti­onships, inju­s­ti­ce and explo­ita­ti­on of peo­p­le as well as sick­ness and death. With all this bag­ga­ge, we can never come clo­se to God. We could not bear his puri­ty. Here in this life and in our eter­nal life after death. The con­se­quence would be eter­nal sepa­ra­ti­on from our Crea­tor. The worst thing about it would be that we would have to spend our eter­ni­ty wit­hout God, which would be even worse than “hell on earth”, as the­re would be no spark of hope, no joy and no way back. But it is pre­cis­e­ly from this “eter­nal death” that Jesus wan­ted to save us humans. When he died on the cross, he allo­wed hims­elf to be punis­hed for our wrong deeds and thoughts and lite­ral­ly took them upon hims­elf. That is why ever­yo­ne who brings their dung to him and unloads it on him can expe­ri­ence com­ple­te for­gi­ve­ness and a new begin­ning with God. This libe­ra­tes and God’s for­gi­ve­ness appli­es from this moment onwards for all eter­ni­ty. This cle­ars the way for us to come clo­se to God again and con­scious­ly allow him to reign in our lives. When I exten­ded this invi­ta­ti­on to Jesus, I was fil­led with a real joy and a deep peace. From that moment on, I knew that Jesus was real­ly the­re and has been wal­king through life with me ever sin­ce. This has prac­ti­cal impli­ca­ti­ons.

But how can someone who has alre­a­dy died come into our lives? Good ques­ti­on. Becau­se he did not remain in the gra­ve, but rose from the dead after three days. That sounds pret­ty incre­di­ble. “Is the­re any pro­of of this?” you are pro­ba­b­ly asking. The resur­rec­tion of Jesus is sup­port­ed by many his­to­ri­cal sources. The for­mer athe­ist and Bible cri­tic Josh McDo­well wan­ted to pro­ve with his rese­arch on the ques­ti­on of the resur­rec­tion that Jesus could not have risen and that the Bible could not be true. But ins­tead he found out some asto­nis­hing things, which he published in his book “The Fact of the Resur­rec­tion” (free­ly available PDF ver­si­on). [hier Link – But­ton zur PDF ein­fü­gen]

2. he still stands by his many pro­mi­ses today

For exam­p­le, he has pro­mi­sed that he will give us a peace that the world can­not give (cf. The Bible: John 16 ver­se 33). A super­na­tu­ral peace, so to speak, that is inde­pen­dent of exter­nal cir­cum­s­tances. Even when the storm rages around you or the chal­lenges of life threa­ten to over­whelm you. He gives this peace to tho­se who seek his clo­sen­ess. Some­ti­mes we first have to give him our worries and fears so that this peace can be felt. But if we allow him to free us from our worries, the inner peace that comes with his pre­sence returns.

3. he always has an open ear and ans­wers our pray­ers.

He is serious about his pro­mi­se that we can come to him when we are suf­fe­ring under the bur­den of ever­y­day life. He is the­re and lis­tens, even if we can’t see him. We can talk to him howe­ver we like and also about wha­t’s on our minds. He alre­a­dy knows any­way. Becau­se he knows us through and through and is hap­py when we come to him with our con­cerns. And he ans­wers. Not always in the way we would wish or expect. But he often sur­pri­ses us with his ans­wers and shows us a much broa­der per­spec­ti­ve. Tha­t’s how I expe­ri­en­ced it per­so­nal­ly: my gre­at love.

By the way: If you are one of tho­se who enjoy­ed play­ing with the gum­ball machi­ne as a child: Jesus is not a wish machi­ne. Along the lines of “pray­er coin in, che­wing gum out”. He does not allow hims­elf to be locked into our often one-sided view of things. But he shows us new hori­zons and tho­se who trust him will not be dis­ap­poin­ted.

4. he does not turn his back on us even when we do.

If he did that, he would have writ­ten off the world long ago. Count­less expe­ri­en­ces of peo­p­le who had alre­a­dy been com­ple­te­ly writ­ten off by others testi­fy to this: Jun­kies, cri­mi­nals, alco­ho­lics… Click here for their real-life sto­ries.

If you would like to get to know Jesus bet­ter, read the eye­wit­ness account of John, who tra­ve­led with him on earth for three years: John.