Do You Believe This

Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"

This is the ultimate question that we each have to answer when we come face to face with our own humanity and our own mortality. Do I believe that Jesus is the son of God?

The answer to this question determines the course of the rest of our life. If the answer is yes, then I have no choice but to follow Christ, to obey his commandments, to live a life of striving to be like him. If my answer is no, then I don’t have any need for those things but I also am resigned and consigned to the consequences.

Life is full of choices, each with its implications. The natural result of those choices generally has both good and bad. The key to being “successful” in life is being able to determine in advance which way the scales will tip. Nothing, it seems, is all bad or all good from a human perspective, which is the great trap of the flesh. From the human perspective even sin is not all bad, otherwise we probably wouldn’t do it. But in the eyes of a pure and righteous God, everything takes on a different dimension because of the clarity of his vision. There are not degrees of sin. It’s all bad. There are no degrees of salvation. It’s all or nothing. You can’t partially accept Christ and gain eternal life. You must accept or reject him as the son of God and the redemption of the world.

Once you have seen and have accepted then your path is determined and you must follow it.

But the point of decision is the most important point of your life. “Do you believe this?”