You are imbued with meaning.

 

You are filled with purpose – brimming with it.

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You are not random, accidental, or expendable any more than the precisely tuned tilt of the earth’s axis or the path of its circuit around the sun.

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I know this.

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And I also know that we, as a species, tend to think far too small.

 

We speak of God like some magnificently powerful wizard that can still be put on trial according to a moral law we arbitrarily assign, rather than a Being utterly all-encompassing, not possessing power and wisdom, but BEING power and wisdom with no limits whatsoever.

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He created the very concept of good. He created trillions-of-miles wide galaxies. He created light.

 

He created you. And he set out a purpose and destiny full of rich meaning and beautiful possibility unique to you, which you can discover in harmony with the one who made you (it will take courage) or miss it – tragically, easily, entirely. 

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For the analytical mind open to honest inquiry and the possible existence of forces not-yet-quantified, there is a mountain of evidence to support this view.

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For the poet – well, we would not craft poetry without that purpose kneaded into the clay of even the most unbelieving heart among us.

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Our Creator is kind (invented the very possibility and concept of kindness, in fact). And he is imminently rational. Because of this, he did not leave his creations to stumble about in the forest of ideas hoping we might happen across some bits of truth and avoid plunging off cliffs. He gave us a very clear set of instructions for life in this finely-crafted, meaning-filled universe so that we could experience the fullness of all he has put into us. He did this initially through the credible and proven words of prophets and oral historians, handed down with verifiable accuracy through the centuries, and soon (surprisingly soon, if you research it) with the device of written language, in which those oral truths were recorded and transmitted with breathtaking continuity through centuries, languages and cultures.

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That singular, supernatural roadmap from the Creator we have come to call “the scrolls,” or in later Greek “the book,” anglicized to “Bible.”

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Here, the Creator generously, clearly, explains Life, Meaning, Himself and Us – and alludes to many aspects of the Universe, including dolphins. (If you didn’t get that little writer’s wink, please just ignore the dolphins and move on.)

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In the Bible he tells us what kind of creation this is, what went wrong that led to the pain, violence and death that are so familiar to us, and what he has done to fix it.

 

He explains, too, the one and only way to respond.

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Doesn’t some primal urge inside yourself insist that you were meant to go on, not live as a momentary flash that fades to nothing? The Bible confirms that we were created for eternity.

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The Creator made a perfect creation and part of that perfection included endowing one particular creature with some attributes of His very own nature – including free will. He didn’t just give them a touch of free will – apples or oranges? pink or green? side sleeper or back? – he gave them (us) so complete a free will that we could reject the one who made us.

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The fact that he gave us the gift of choice does not mean that whatever we choose is good. Quite the opposite, in fact. It means our choices carry a weight we must bear on our own shoulders, a weight we must not ignore. For the Creation he made was fashioned to work according to a plan, and deviations from that plan – murder, greed, selfishness, for example – would break it. But, again, the Creator is kind. So he gave our first ancestors a very clear instruction – only one – which would set them on a course of living in accord with their Creator, growing and thriving in the fabric of this fantastic creation they were part of.

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Or not.

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Since he created the very fabric of reality, anything – anything – that runs counter to his intricate and beautiful reality would rend the fabric and leave a bleeding tear.

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They chose that.

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He gave a name to everything that was a rending of the fabric, all that was anti-him: sin.

 

Our forbearers chose sin, piercing the beautiful potentiality with a dark wound, and each of us down the line chooses it again and again, widening the tear, as our bleeding history bears witness. The sins we choose – spectacularly hideous or small and petty – are actually less significant than the fact that we choose sin. We choose un-God, not-God – setting ourselves against the Creator of ourselves and the universe we inhabit.

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Knowing this would happen, our Creator still gave us the dignity of choice.

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He also put a conscience within us that testifies against our every anti-Creator choice, though we often bury it under so many layers of denial and distraction that it is all but inaudible in the end. In addition, he gave us that surprisingly understandable, painstakingly written book to guide and warn us. Many never bother to open it, while others go to great pains to explain why we should reject it.

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Since he created a reality that includes the concept of justice, since all of us who inhabit that reality were made by him, and since he instructed and warned us, we are without excuse.

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The result, as he told us it would be, is death. Not a one-time plunge into oblivion, but an ongoing persistent dying that my mind recoils from when I even consider it, just as the life he created us to experience, had we chosen all-God rather than not-God, is everlasting, richer and fuller than any mind can conceive.  

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If this sounds like a God playing with his creatures like chess-pieces, we should remember two key truths. One we’ve already mentioned: he told us in advance and gave us choice – something a chess piece doesn’t possess. The second is more mind-boggling.

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He entered into our suffering as a hurtable man, and experienced it all himself.

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The One eternal God, existent from all time in three persons who are yet one (another topic to discuss elsewhere) in the second of those eternally unified persons – called the “Son” – was born into human flesh, suffered all the indignities and pains of ordinary life, and become the first and only person to continually choose the right, the all-God, the life-giving at every point, and to reject every not-God choice.

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Remember, the good and right creation includes the concept and importance of justice, and the enormity of choosing against the creator of all reality is death. To shrug at such a monstrous choice as a creature rejecting its creator is to discount justice, goodness, and the meaning and purpose with which we are imbued. The penalty must be served.

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Yet, because the Creator is the Creator, he wove a way into his perfect creation, from before he made us, to satisfy justice and still restore us to the life for which we were created.

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As a man named Yeshua living in first century Palestine, the Creator lived a life of perfect choice and paid, in unimaginable suffering, the just penalty of every not-God choice made by every person he ever created.

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We call that historically attested act the crucifixion.

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Ending there, it would have been just the pathetic, torturous death of a madman. Not a noble or good man, mind you. For, as the authorities at the time rightfully recognized, anyone who claimed to be the eternal creator of reality and the only means to eternal life was neither a good nor wise teacher … unless of course the things he said were true.

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It did not end there, of course, because the Creator a) is unkillable in any permanent sense, b) had written down in advance what would happen – not once but multiple times over several centuries to be sure we had the evidence we needed to recognize what was going on, and c) was not only paying the penalty for every sin but actually striking a death-blow against the power of not-God choices and the death they had ushered into the universe.

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His undeniably (and officially certified) dead body was buried, and in under 72 hours life returned – by his own decree – to that body. He walked around, spoke, ate and visited with those who knew him well. He was utterly healthy, yet bore the evidential marks of crucifixion, lest there be any question about it really being him.

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And so, we circle back to choice.

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I have chosen badly. I have chosen in ten thousand ways, small and large, to reject the laws of my Creator. There is a penalty.

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But my Creator holds out to me the payment that satisfies my dreadful debt.

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I can ignore that offer and go on choosing whatever I like without regard to the Creator. Or I can acknowledge the guilt of my choices and come to him for mercy.

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Choosing the latter requires me to trust that Yeshua Hamashiach – Jesus the promised One – Jesus Christ – was who he said he was – the Son of God and one with the Father. In other words, our Creator. It also means I must take the Creator at his word when he says that Jesus was the sacrificial lamb sent to pay for the hateful, anti-Creator sin choices of every human being, so all who trust him can be restored to peace with our Creator and enjoy the unending life of purpose and unsullied joy he made us for.

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It means that I cease my rebellion and bow my knee to my rightful Lord. Colloquially, I’m not boss of me. He always was, of course, but now I acknowledge that fact.

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I accept the gift of pardon that he holds out to me. He holds out that same gift to you. 

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Miraculous things follow that choice.

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Our Creator puts his own Spirit into us to live with and guide us in a real and intimate relationship different than anything we have ever experienced.

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True, all of us who choose to accept His gift of forgiveness will inevitably still find ourselves making not-God choices counter to what our Creator has decreed. But, like all those we made before we accepted His gift, these were paid for when he bowed his head in death. What’s more, the hold sin had on us was broken when he rose victorious from the tomb. Like a zombie hand clutching at our ankles from the grave, sin will still pull at us, but it is now a fragile corpse hand that cannot overpower us if we resist.

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And we do resist. We no longer love our sin. We hate it, and more and more we want to live in accordance with our Creator’s plan.

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For the first time ever, we truly have freedom of choice, because we are empowered as never before to choose the good.

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This is my summary of the Good News – the Best News Ever – that opens the very real door to eternal life. Here is a shorter, more direct version written by our Creator himself.

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As it is written:

“There is none righteous, no, not one;

There is none who understands;

There is none who seeks after God.

They have all turned aside;

They have together become unprofitable;

There is none who does good, no, not one.”

“Their throat is an open tomb;

With their tongues they have practiced deceit”;

“The poison of asps is under their lips”;

“Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.”

“Their feet are swift to shed blood;

Destruction and misery are in their ways;

And the way of peace they have not known.”

“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

Romans 3:10-18

 

But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Romans 3:21-26

 

He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. John 3:36

 

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. John 3:16-17