Why Would You Need Jesus?

“If you could get to heaven by being a good person, why would you need Jesus?” I asked Dolly, a young person I found sitting on a bench outside of a grocery store. Dolly said she had attended a Christian church, believes in God and that she will go to heaven because she hadn’t done any of the real bad things that could send a person to hell.

In her view, Jesus basically came to teach us and to set an example for us to follow, which is why I asked her whether she even needed Jesus for salvation. Anyone with a reasonable church background has heard growing up that “Jesus died for your sins”, but what does that really mean? Why would the obscure death of a Jewish itinerate preacher on a cross 2000 years ago in a remote Roman province have anything to do with our forgiveness here in America today?

Everything. Jesus lived and taught the moral law of God as revealed in the Jewish scriptures so that we might have a mirror in which to see ourselves, not in comparison to other people but in comparison to God’s holy standard. And if we are brave enough to take an honest look at ourselves in that mirror, we will see that we can’t possibly measure up to that standard. Romans 3 tells us “…no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin”.

God’s law, then, helps us; not because by following it we can be saved, but because by measuring ourselves by its standard we see our need for a savior. John the Baptist used various commandments to prepare people’s hearts for Jesus, and Jesus did the same with his famous “Sermon on the Mount” in Matthew 5. In it, he told us of an impossible standard: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

But Jesus also taught that what is impossible for man is possible for God. We can’t save ourselves but Jesus can. Romans 3 continues to tell us “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith.”

This all means that as our “sacrifice of atonement”, Jesus took the punishment for our sins in our place. Even though we are guilty and He is innocent, He took the punishment that we deserve. We did the crime, and He paid our fine. But we need to settle out of court, now, today, before that great Day of Judgement arrives. We need the repentance John the Baptist preached to “receive by faith” the gift of our salvation bought with the “shedding of his blood” – which alone can take away our sin and allow us to reach that impossible standard of perfection in God’s sight.

Why do we need Jesus? Better, where would we be without Him? Just something to think about this Christmas as we contemplate the obscure birth of a baby in a manger in a remote Roman province with a little village called Bethlehem, over 2000 years ago.