Our Link to God

Romans 5:1-21 “For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19, NASB). I have a Kroger Plus card that I carry on my key ring. I had the card for several years, and at last the hole in the card broke. It was not a surprise that the hole for the key chain broke because for several months I could see that it was eroding and it would need to be replaced. So, I went to the Customer Service counter and asked the lady if I could get a new card. “Yes” she replied, as I showed her my old card. I asked if I would be getting a new number. “Yes” she said as she handed me new cards. She gave me a pen and a paper to fill out. The man who was standing there told me that they could link my new card to the old card so that I would not lose fuel points. I could use my old card until the new card was registered into the system. I filled out the necessary paper, took my card and put one of the new cards on my key ring. I thanked the lady and continued with my planned activities. While thinking about what I would write about for this week’s article it occurred to me that all of us are sinners, dead in our trespasses and sins until we are linked to God through Jesus our Savior. When Jesus links us to God we no longer have a need for our old life of sin. We have new life in Jesus Christ. “Therefore if anyone is in Christ he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Cor. 5:17, NASB). So in this article I want to write about our link to God. The process by which Jesus links us to God is known as salvation. First, we ask two questions, what is salvation and why do we need it? In the New Testament the Greek word “soteria” means deliverance. In our context today salvation is deliverance from the penalty and power of sin immediately and deliverance from the presence of sin when Jesus returns for His people. In Genesis 2:27 we read, “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (NASB). God created human kind to reflect Himself. God gave them the highest position among all the created beings and gave the man and woman dominion over the other animals (1:26). In time the serpent tempted and deceived the woman. He convinced her to disobey God and she convinced her husband to do likewise. They died spiritually and God expelled them from the Garden (Gen. 3:22-24). Sinful man and woman became separated from Holy God. Salvation is the deliverance from the punishment of death and separation from God. The second question is why do we need salvation? Sin separates us from God permanently. When God expelled the man and woman from the garden He established the truth that Holy God will not allow unholy people or unholy things in His presence. All people are bent toward living to satisfy their own flesh. Because of sin the human mind thinks about satisfying the desires of the flesh. People like living in sin. It is wrong to conclude that a person who lives to satisfy the flesh is less happy than the one who is a Christian. Paul writes about this truth in Romans 3:10-18 as he uses Old Testament references from the Psalms and the Prophets. People enjoy committing acts to satisfy the flesh. Paul summarizes the works of the flesh and contracts them with the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:19-23. Since people enjoy sin why would a person want to change their lifestyles, their behaviors? At the beginning of this article we said that God created us in His image. God created us as reflections of God’s self. Originally, human beings had the attributes and desires that God has. God put His Spirit in the man and the woman. “Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being” (Gen. 2:7, NASB). Mankind was both flesh and spirit. God walked and talked with the man and the woman every day. When humans disobeyed God, He removed His Spirit from the man and the woman and they became spiritually dead. Left with the flesh void of God’s Spirit human beings begins to try to compensate by finding ways to satisfy the flesh. No matter how much we do to satisfy the desires of the flesh, nothing can satisfy the longing of the flesh to be united with the Spirit of God. We need a savior. We need a link. We need something or someone to link our old selves up to a new self that is able to commune with God. You see, in time my Kroger Plus card became a burden to me because it would be difficult to keep up with the card since it was no longer on the key chain. As we live from day to day our lives become a burden to ourselves. Eventually, our lifestyle of satisfying the desires of the flesh becomes a burden. We begin to sense a need for a new life. The problem is that we do not know where this new life can be found, and we do not know how to obtain it. There is no hope. There is nothing that a person can do to be linked to God. The good news is that there is hope because of God’s love, mercy, and grace. How can we obtain God’s love, mercy, and grace? We cannot obtain God’s love, mercy, and grace, but we can receive them. When the man and the woman sinned in the garden (Genesis 3) God already had a way to reconcile humanity to Him (Gen. 3:14-15). The Old Testament is the story of the works of God that leads up to the coming of the Savior. The New Testament is the story of God acting out of His love, mercy, and grace by sending His Son into the world to die a vicarious death on the cross to redeem us from our sins. Jesus is our salvation; our deliverance from sin and death. Jesus is our link to God. The Gospel is preached and we hear that God has made a way for our old defected life to be linked with a new life with God. By faith we believe the Gospel. We confess our sins and surrender our life to Jesus Christ. We receive God’s salvation and we are reconciled to God (2 Cor. 5:18-19). We are delivered from our sins. Jesus gives us His Spirit and we are now linked to God.