The Church's One Foundation: JESUS

Dear Brother/Sister in Christ,

In Job 14:14, Job asks, "If a man dies, shall he live again?" This question is essential to every human being. One answer is found in John 11:25-26. In this passage of Scripture, Jesus is responding to a statement made by Martha, one of the sisters of Lazarus. Lazarus was a dear friend of Jesus who had recently died, and Martha was saying that if Jesus had been there, her brother would not have died.

"Jesus said to her, 'I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die...'"

What is crucial to understand here is that Jesus is not talking about natural or physical death. He uses this opportunity to state a profound truth that is the underlying foundation of Christianity. This foundational truth is that a person is either spiritually alive or spiritually dead based on the person's relationship with Christ while he or she was physically alive.

When a person believes and confesses Jesus as Savior and Lord, this person is deemed to have experienced the new birth. He or she is now alive to God in Christ Jesus (1 Corinthians 15:22). This person is then said to be born-again (John 3:3), saved (Romans 10:9-10), a child of God (John 1:12), or a Christian (1 Peter 4:16).

The opposite of saved is lost. Therefore, anyone who does not believe and confess Jesus as Savior and Lord is considered a non-Christian, a non-believer, unsaved, and condemned (John 3:16-18). However, the Word tells us in II Peter 3:9 that God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.

When God created the earth, He invested the totality of Mankind in the first man: Adam. God gave Adam dominion over the earth and all that was in it (Genesis 1:26). The devil, in the form of a serpent, tempted Adam's mate, Eve, to eat of the fruit of the tree that God had commanded Adam not to eat. She succumbed to this temptation, and when she offered the fruit to Adam, he also ate of it.

In this act of disobedience, Adam rejected God's Lordship. By this deed, Adam put the earth and all Mankind, whom he represented under the dominion of Satan. As a result, Adam's rulership of the earth passed to Satan.

The most tragic consequence was that Satan's rebellious nature, called "sin nature," became a part of man's nature. The sin nature spiritually separated Mankind from God. This spiritual separation is called spiritual death.

God is so good, and loves you and me so much, that even though Adam disobeyed God, He did something about spiritual death so that we could escape its penalty of condemnation. That "something" is really a "someone"-His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus came to earth in human form. Through His death, burial and resurrection Jesus provided the redemption necessary for Mankind to enjoy the father/child relationship that had existed with Almighty God before Adam's sin. However, there is one stipulation. Every person, upon reaching the age of accountability, must now choose between having God as his spiritual Father (through Jesus) or having Satan as his spiritual head by not accepting Jesus as Savior and Lord.

Peter says in Acts 4:12: "Nor is there salvation in any other [referring to Jesus], for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved."

Jesus, speaking of Himself said in John 14:6: "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me."

From these verses we can see that Jesus is God's only way for man to be saved and become spiritually alive.

Jesus said in John 5:24: "Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life."

Every person who comes into this world inherits his or her parents' sin nature. They received this nature from their parents, who got it from their parents, and so on down the line, all the way back to Adam and Eve. This nature is a spiritually dead nature. This is why the Bible says we move "from death into life" when we accept salvation through Jesus. The moment a person confesses Jesus as Savior and Lord, he or she immediately becomes the possessor of eternal life.