A Christian is anyone who believes in Jesus Christ as their only way of being in relationship with God.

But what does that even mean? And why does it matter?

A quick world history lesson, according to the Bible, reveals that God is a self-existing, eternal being, full of power, majesty, and indescribable love and generosity. This Being decided to create, not out of need or loneliness, but of his free will, to share of himself with those he created (Gen. 1). He spoke and things started appearing out of nothing. Light, sky, water, fish, birds, and creeping things that creep along the earth (could it be that cockroaches existed before sin entered the world? Hmm.).

The crown jewel of God’s creation was people, you and me. Well, originally Adam and Eve. But human beings were at the top of the list of God’s proudest accomplishments. We were to be a sort of “God-reflector” to the rest of creation. He made us in his image (Gen. 1:26-27), bearing a reasonable sense of creativity, free will and glory that came directly from him. But we cracked the reflector. Actually, we shattered it into a million pieces, using God’s gift of free will to choose against him, rather than to obey him.

When God created Adam, he gave him one boundary. One. He said, “Don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” (Gen. 2:17) God established a law, a rule, a parameter across which Adam was not to go. It was necessary, too. After all, if there were not a line drawn, then Adam (and you and I) really wouldn’t have been given free will. Free will requires a choice. Adam chose poorly. And so has everyone since.

Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, disobeying God’s one instruction, and thereby bringing sin (spiritual separation from God) into the human race. Their disobedience stained the rest of humanity, every person born in a state of spiritual separation from the God who made them. But God didn’t abandon human beings just because they rejected him. He instead set in motion a redemptive plan, one that would ultimately culminate thousands of years later in the person of Jesus Christ, God’s own Son.

Jesus came on the scene after some of the darkest centuries of spiritual dryness in history. He was born in a manner unlike anyone else, not through normal human conception, but by a miracle. He was born from a virgin woman, Mary (Matt. 1:18-25). God himself impregnated Mary with his own son, his promised Messiah. What is Messiah, you ask? Good question.

Back in the Garden of Eden, after Adam and Eve sinned, they realized they were naked and felt ashamed (note the terrible link between sexuality and shame that was an initial, direct result of their sin). They hid in the bushes. God called out and asked where they were. When they stepped out from behind the bushes, God asked why they were hiding. Adam bravely piped up and blamed Eve, who in turn blamed the serpent (who, by now, had slithered under a rock). Without waiting for contrition on the parts of Adam and Eve, God killed an animal and clothed them with its skin (Gen. 3:21). This provided a foreshadowing of God’s eventual explicit requirement for shed blood as atonement for sin.

This blood thing comes up again when God puts Moses in charge of leading the Israelites out of their captivity in Egypt (Exodus 12). He instructs him to tell the people to sacrifice an unblemished lamb (one without defect or illness) on a particular day and spread the blood of the lamb across the doorposts of their houses. That night God would pass through Egypt, bringing judgment on the people by striking dead the firstborn child in each home, except the houses with blood on the doorposts. When he saw the blood, he would pass over those houses and show mercy on everyone inside, the blood signifying their trust and obedience to God.

Later on there were even more instructions given regarding blood sacrifices under the Levitical priests (Lev. 1-7). Many rituals and ceremonies were all part of this redemptive picture God was painting in history, one that required blood as an appeasement against God’s holy justice against sin. But none of these sacrifices permanently paid the penalty for sin. They had to be repeated over and over again. Why? Because none of those lambs or goats or bulls were perfect. Nor were they like us. They were animals, not humans. They served only as a picture of something (rather, Someone) to come later, the Messiah.

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Kings have been a big deal throughout history. Still are in many parts of the world. A monarchy provided a king with absolute authority over the people in his kingdom. The king’s word was law and any who offended the king were dealt with swiftly, and sometimes fatally. Kings must only answer to God (that is, if they don’t already think they are him!). King David was a significant king in the history of God’s redemptive plan.

God chose Israel to be his beacon nation, proclaiming his greatness to all the people of the world through them. Don’t try to figure out why he chose Israel, he just did. Along the way, the Israelites got grumpy because they weren’t governed like other nations, those that had kings (1 Sam. 8). They were governed by this invisible God who spoke through prophets and that just didn’t suit them anymore. So, they complained for a king. God gave them what they wanted, but warned them of the oppression that such a desire would eventually bring because human kings do not govern like God does. Israel’s first king was Saul, a guy who started out okay, but ended up rotten. David followed up Saul and is still considered the greatest king in Israel’s history, a man after God’s own heart.

God loved David and David loved God. David certainly wasn’t perfect, but God’s favor was poured out on him, even making him a promise that his throne would be established forever and that Messiah (literally, the Anointed One) would come through his lineage. Yes, the one to save the world from sin’s penalty and reign on David’s throne forever would be a direct descendent of this great king. But this Messiah wouldn’t arrive for nearly 1000 years. God isn’t hasty in fulfilling his plans.

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Now we are back up to speed with where Jesus fits into this picture. He was a direct descendent of King David (Matt. 1), declared the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world by John the Baptist (John 1:29), and the only one able to permanently erase the penalty due for our sin (he wasn’t stained by sin because he was conceived by God, not man). And he did pay our penalty – willingly. But his sacrifice didn’t happen the way you might think.

Jesus made waves, not with sinners, but with religious leaders. He toppled their system of power and control, their ways of manipulation and extortion. Jesus spread the message of God’s kingdom (after all, Jesus was the King of kings) and that he was the only way to come to God (John 14:6). It was his claims of exclusivity that still trouble many to this day. Jesus said no one comes to God except through him. No one.

David Robinson is one of my all-time favorite basketball players. He is also just a great human being, one who has lived with integrity and character in the face of many pressures and temptations. We conduct an annual golf tournament for our ministry to raise money and awareness of purity resources. In the early years we used to auction off various items at the tournament. One year, we decided we would approach David to autograph a couple of basketballs. But you don’t just open the phone book and look up David Robinson’s number.

We made several phone calls to organizations and affiliations that David had to try and figure out how to contact him. Finally, we got connected to his personal assistant, the person you must go through if you are going to connect with David. After a few more calls back and forth, David graciously accepted our request and donated the basketballs. That connection never would have happened without going through his personal assistant.

Unlike David Robinson, God doesn’t require us to do all kinds of hunting around to find out the way to him. The way is Jesus, the Light of the world, the one who proclaimed on mountainsides and in courtyards that he and the Father are one. To know God you must know Jesus. No one gets a front row seat with God apart from a personal escort from Jesus.

But what did Jesus do that was so significant for us? He paid our sin debt – completely. He became the sacrificial lamb, the blood on the doorpost, the clothing to cover our shame and brokenness and sin.

Eventually, the religious leaders had enough of Jesus. The Bible tells us that Jesus came into the world, the world he made, but that the world didn’t recognize him (John 1:10-11). In other words, human beings once again rejected God through misdirecting their free will toward self rather than toward God (just like in Eden). Jesus was sentenced to be crucified for what the religious leaders deemed blasphemy; claiming to be equal with God. This is what is so significant to us. Through the punishment he endured, he would bear the full weight of God’s justice against sin, so we wouldn’t have to (Romans 3:21-26).

Jesus was whipped, flesh torn from his body, blood pouring over his open wounds. He was beaten, bruised, spit upon, mocked, laughed at, all for sins he never committed (he lived a sinless life). He was forced to carry his cross, splinters wedging deep into the open wounds upon his back. Finally, he was hung naked on a cross, crown of thorns pressed into his brow, hands and feet nailed securely. Then the crushing blow, when God turned away his head (because he is holy and cannot be joined to sin) while Jesus became sin for our sake (2 Cor. 5:21). The agony was indescribable. The torture gruesome. The payment complete. In that moment, Jesus looked toward the skies and declared, “It is finished!” God’s redemptive plan hit a high note, even on such a dark day.

Jesus was dead. But not for long. Three days later he could not be found in the tomb. Why? Because God raised him from dead, to prove that he was the totally acceptable sacrifice for the sin of the world. God was pleased with his sacrifice, and as a result no more lambs or goats or bulls or any other creature would have to shed its blood for sin’s sake (Heb. 7:26-28). God’s justice was fulfilled through the love his Son displayed by willingly giving his life in our place to pay a debt we owed, but could never erase on our own (we couldn’t even make the interest payments!).

God has always desired only one thing from the human beings he created: relationship (Mark 12:28-31). He wants us to know him and walk through life with him – forever. Sin severed that connection, drawing us toward the bushes to hide in our shame and fear. But God never wavered in his desire for us to be reconnected. Patiently and purposefully, he orchestrated the most outlandish plan to buy back the rebellious, the broken, the wayward, the lost, the sinner. And the way you can have this restored relationship with God? Jesus.

Only Jesus.