John 3:16-17
God Sacrificed His Son for Us
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
Jesus did come to earth and dwell among us...He would become our Savior...He offered Himself as a sacrifice for our sins...He was the Anointed One, the One to Come, the Messiah from the Old Testament Scripture...He fulfilled the Old Testament Words...Because of His sacrifice, everyone will be saved from physical death by His resurrection and we all can be saved from our sins through our faith in Jesus and the One who sent Him...And abundant life goes through the Cross...The Cross is a symbol of sacrifice...And if one believes this, then you realize that there will be troubles in this world and at times you must sacrifice...For those who believe in Jesus realizes that their faith and its symbol is the Cross, a symbol of sacrifice...God so LOVES the world that He gave His Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life...God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him...God LOVES us and LOVES the world and wants us to follow His Son's Teachings...Jesus would die to save us from our sins...
When Jesus finished His Great Sermon on the Mount with this wisdom on living life on the foundation of the Rock...This is the Way...The Way we should lead our lives...Although faith is not sacrifice, our faith runs deep through the Cross...There is no end to the Rock...The Rock is Eternal, when we have faith...One who feels Jesus' peace understands that His Peace passes regular understanding...He teaches us to put His Words and Teachings into practice, “Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the Rock...The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the Rock...But everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand...The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”...
Jesus, not only gives us hope, but He also holds out hope for how we live our ordinary lives day to day...He gets us, and knows that life is a routine of eating, embracing, singing, crying, laughing and living...
Pastor Tim Keller wrote these things about sacrificing in life: “Our greatest motive for surrendering to Him cannot be for what He will do in us...It must be to love Him for what He did for us.”...“Jesus, unlike the founder of any other major faith, holds out hope for ordinary human life...Our future is not an ethereal, impersonal form of consciousness...We will not float through the air, but rather will eat, embrace, sing, laugh, and dance in the Kingdom of God, in degrees of power, glory, and joy that we can't at the present imagine.”...“Every other religion and philosophy says you have to do something to connect to God; but Christianity says no, Jesus Christ came to do for you what you couldn’t do for yourself.”...“If you have ever been on a coast in a storm and seen the waves come in and hit the rocks, sometimes the waves are so large that they cover a particular rock, and you think, “That is the end of that rock.”...But when the waves recede, there it is still...It hasn’t budged an inch...A person who feels the “peace that passes understanding” is like that...No matter what is thrown at you, you know it will not make you lose your footing.”...“The Christian teaching does not offer a choice between fulfillment and sacrifice but rather mutual fulfillment through mutual sacrifice...Jesus gave Himself up; He died to Himself to save us and make us His...Now we give ourselves up, we die to ourselves, first when we repent and believe the gospel, and later as we submit to His will day by day...Subordinating ourselves to Him, however, is radically safe, because He has already shown that He was willing to go to hell and back for us...This banishes fears that loving surrender means loss of oneself.”...“God saw Abraham’s sacrifice and said, “Now I know that you love Me, because you did not withhold your only son from Me.”...But how much more can we look at His sacrifice on the Cross, and say to God, “Now, we know that you LOVE us...For You did not withhold Your Son, your Only son, whom You LOVE, from us.”...When the magnitude of what He did dawns on us, it makes it possible finally to rest our hearts in Him rather than in anything else.”...