What Did Jesus Do For Us?

By Jason, M.Ed., M.A.R., Headmaster

"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." (John 3:16, NIV)

I remember going to Disney Land in California when I was six years old. I had a blast, until I got lost. I don’t know how it happened, but I still remember the panic and fear of not knowing where my parents were. I freaked out. I don’t even know how long I was lost or how I eventually found my parents again, but I know being lost—even at Disneyland—was terrifying and I never wanted to be lost again.

The Bible tells us we are lost—lost in our sin and separated from God, our heavenly Father. Our sin cuts us off from God and leaves us completely alone in the world, and this should terrify us. We should be willing to do anything possible to get back to God and be His again—to be found, to be saved.

The good news is, we don’t have to work really hard to get back to God. We don’t have save ourselves. That’s a good thing, because it would be impossible. Imagine if I had gone to a worker at Disneyland and said, “I’m lost,” and they looked at me—six years old—and said, “Well, I guess you’d better find your way home, then. I’m not going to help you.” I would’ve been ruined, abandoned, lost forever. I might still be there today, 28 years old and crying for my mommy. Man, am I glad that didn’t happen.

I’m even happier that God didn’t leave us lost in our sin, but he sent Jesus to come and save us. How did Jesus save us? What did He do for us? Well, He did three things to rescue us:

1. He lived a perfect life. He did exactly what we are all supposed to do. He was exactly like God in everything He did, said, and thought. He followed God perfectly and was the perfect image of God on earth. By doing this, He set an example for all of us and taught us what it means to live as God’s image. He also did for us all the things we were supposed to but didn’t because we sinned.

2. He died in our place. We learned yesterday that we are all under God’s death penalty for our sins. Well, Jesus died the death penalty for us when He died on the cross. He never sinned in any way, so He did not deserve to die, but He died for us, in our place, so that we would not have to suffer God’s death penalty.

3. He beat death when He rose from the dead. Not only did Jesus take our death penalty, but then He conquered death, He beat death by coming back to life never to die again. When Jesus beat death, He set us free from ever having to be afraid of death. Death was beaten by Jesus, and now we know we can live forever with God, even though our bodies will still die one day.

In His life and death and resurrection, Jesus did everything needed to save us from our sin. He lived the life we could not live, died the death we deserved to die, and beat our greatest fears by rising from the dead.

All we have to do to be rescued from our sin now is to trust in what Jesus did for us and to ask God to forgive all of our sins and save us because of what Jesus did for us. Once we have trusted in Jesus and asked God to save us, we are freed from the penalty of sin and we begin our new life with God, leaving our old life behind like yesterday’s dirty underwear.