The emaciated bodies, the pale faces, the pain-deadened eyes, the hollow cheeks all gave silent witness to the helplessness and hopelessness of the diseased and disfigured and dying who lay, crumpled and sprawled, like discarded refuse on the terrace that led to the water’s edge. As the eyes of God scanned the mass of misery, He saw “a great number of disabled people . . . the blind, the lame, the paralyzed,” (John 5:3, NIV). Each pitiful sufferer focused all attention on the water’s surface, desperately pinning his or her hope on being the first to spot the bubbling movement and the first to react by jumping-or falling-into the pool. Each was totally preoccupied with his or her own disability-blindness or lameness or paralysis.
The multitude of the miserable were all focused on the pool, on the water, on the place, on a traditional source of help, even as God Himself stood in their midst! Where is your focus?
The Shepherd’s call has echoed down through the centuries. It’s a clarion call to all sheep, offering freedom and salvation to those who are willing to come out of the . . .
denominationalism,
traditionalism,
ritualism,
agnosticism
of their religion and enter into a personal relationship with God. It’s an authoritative command to turn away from sin and selfishness and walk through the open Door of salvation into the fold of a personal, permanent, love relationship with the Creator Who became our Savior.
Just as there was one door that led into God’s presence in Eden and one door that led into the safety of the ark and one door that led into the inner sanctuary of the temple, a personal relationship with God is only accessed through one Door Who is Jesus Himself.
The only people who go to heaven are those who are born of water — – those who have been physically born. But those who go to heaven must also be born of the Spirit. Just as the virgin Mary conceived the physical life of the Son of God, you and I conceive the spiritual life of the Son of God when we are “born again.” From that moment on, we are essentially two people on the inside. We have the mind, emotions, and will that we were physically born with, but we now also have the mind, emotions, and will of Christ within us. We have a spiritual “implant” of the life of Jesus Christ within our bodies. This is actually Jesus in the person of the Holy Spirit.
This “implanting” of the life of Christ is a supernatural miracle. It is something God does in response to our humble confession and sincere repentance of sin coupled with our deliberate, personal faith in His Son.
Karl Barth, one of the twentieth century’s premier theologians, said that all religion is man reaching up to God in his own way, according to his own terms, on his own merit, in his own strength. Christianity alone is God reaching down to man.
All non-Judeo-Christian religions are an expression of man’s defiance of God, including His way, His will, and His work. If you ask most people today why they think God will let them into heaven, they will say something like, “I try to be good. I go to church. I’m not perfect, but I believe God will weigh my good deeds against my bad deeds, and I hope the good outweighs the bad. If it does, He will let me into heaven.” It is man’s pride that believes God somehow owes him a heavenly home or eternal life as a reward for good deeds or extra effort or earnest sincerity. But heaven cannot be earned or deserved or bought, which is why God has reached down and just given us Jesus!
Even in the blackness of hate and evil swirling around the Cross, the love of God broke through like the rays of the sun on a stormy day. That love shone down on the two thieves crucified on each side of Jesus. Their agony and fury boiled over and spewed out in a venom of curses and taunts hurled at Jesus, challenging Him to save Himself and them.
But one of the thieves grew quieter and quieter, until finally he rebuked his partner in crime, “We are punished justly, . . . but this man has done nothing wrong.” And then, in one of the most moving conversion scenes in human history, the thief turned his face toward Jesus and pleaded in humble faith, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And Jesus turned his face toward the thief and promised, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” In the twinkling of an eye, that thief changed his eternal destiny; he passed from death to life.
