Jesus once declared that unless you become like a child you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. He probably meant we need the humble simplicity of a child who accepts what you tell them without distrust. Their kind of simple childlike faith is what we need to receive God’s message.
In my last blog post I mentioned that the Bible’s message is simple enough for a child to understand, so let me show how this is true by summarising it at a child’s level.
God is an invisible but all-powerful person, and in the beginning he made everything that exists. He made the stars, the mountains, the oceans, the trees, and the animals, and he even made angels.
When he made human beings, he created them to be like himself, able to talk to him, and he loved them and placed them in a wonderful garden. But one of the angels rebelled against God and he became the devil. He came into the garden of God and tempted the first woman, Eve, and her husband Adam. God had told them they could eat from any fruit tree in the garden except one, but the wicked devil encouraged them to eat it, and they disobeyed God’s order. They followed the devil’s ideas instead of God’s wise instructions for them. They had been perfectly good, made like God in goodness and love, but now they became bad and they were punished by being expelled from the garden where they had been in harmony with God.
From then on, all their children and grandchildren were born with an unfortunate twist in their nature; instead of being perfectly good as they were at the beginning, they now had evil thoughts and desires. This explains why we are all a mixture of good and bad, and the bad is called sin: we were created good at the beginning, but became capable of committing sins too.
Our problem is that God says he will judge us all according to what we have done, and his punishment will come after we die. It is therefore very important to be forgiven of the wrong things we have done, and God wants to forgive us. He wants so much to have us back in harmony with him that he sent from heaven his own dear Son, Jesus, who was born as a baby like us, but he was without any sin. He told us about God his Father in heaven and he told us how we should live a good happy life. But he knew that we all do wrong things, and that we deserve to be punished. As God is the judge of everyone, he must punish sins, but in order to take away our sin and forgive us, Jesus made a difficult decision: he would bear our punishment in our place. That way God would be able lovingly to forgive us freely, without us needing to try to deserve his love by our good deeds.
That was why Jesus let himself be crucified; he died on the cross, but three days later, his Father God raised him from the dead – as much as to say, he was pleased with what Jesus had done.
Jesus taught us the way to a truly good and happy life: it begins by being forgiven, and God forgives those who turn away from sin and who ask Jesus to come into their hearts to live in them and make them good Christians. This is the most important thing you could ever do and it brings new life, eternal life.
Clive Every-Clayton
Authentic Hope for Answers 