The Problem: Romans 3:23 “For all have sined and fallen short of the glory of God”
The Solution(Gift): John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, so whosoever that belives in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.”
How to Get it: John 3:3 “No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”
How you do that: Romans 10:9-10 “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead you shall be saved. For with the heart one believes to righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made to salvation.”
As you may be aware, you’re not perfect. We all make mistakes, and to be quite honest with ourselves, we really don’t need Satan’s help in that area, but he is eager to give it anyways, so where there is one sin, more follow. Unfortunately, those imperfections are the few (zillion) things that can and do keep us out of Heaven and just as unfortunately, that means once we leave the planet, we have no place else to go but down… way, way, WAY down. What? You don’t think that sounds fair? Well, actually, if we think about it, it is, but luckily for us, Jesus and His Father decided that that was not good, and came up with a plan to help “bridge” the gap a bit (okay, a lot.) The plan was this: Jesus would step down off his royal throne and become one of us. I can only imagine how un-fun that must have been, but He did it anyways. Even more un-fun was last part. Not only did He get the privilege of going from being One with our loving omnipotent God to one of the lowest human life forms, at least according to those of among us that look down on and despise the homeless, (see Mathew 8:20, “the Son of Man has no place to lay his head,” sounds pretty homeless to me) He also got to die one of the most humiliating and painful deaths imaginable–crucifixion. Then He got to go spend three days in hell battling Satan (a battle that naturally ended with His victory in which He rescued all the old testament saints and good Jews according to some), before returning to earth in a set of clothes that at least faintly resembled His former glory and brandishing the keys to both Heaven and Hell to prove to us fair mortals He was alive and in control, and finally at long last, more than 33 painful years later, finally was able to return to His kingdom. This, was His Gift to us. Because of what He did, anybody who believes in Him gets a free visa into His kingdom… and His family.
And all we gotta do is ask for it, huh, how about that? A gift that is actually still a gift! Which reminds me of another verse in Mathew(7:7), “Ask and you shall receive.”