Easter Special – Why Did Jesus Have to Die to “Take Away the Sins of the World”?

Why did Jesus have to die to take away the sins of the world? Greg Gilbert joins us today in the Christian worldview for this special Easter weekend program where our mission is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to share the good news that all people can be reconciled to God through faith in Jesus Christ.

I'm David Wheaton, the host, and our website is thechristianworldview.org. Well, one positive result of the coronavirus is that health and family and church and helping others and access to food, basic necessities and having a job are being reprioritized as important over the usual trivial pursuits such as just buying things and recreation and entertainment. And yet even these important aspects and others like government and political leadership and education and economics, all of those pale in comparison to what took place this weekend about 2000 years ago in the city of Jerusalem when Jesus Christ was crucified and buried on Friday and then miraculously rose from the grave on Sunday. So why is this the most important, most momentous event in history? Well, because God provided the one way that man could be reconciled or restored to him.

Why do we need to be reconciled? The short answer is a three-letter word sin. Now resolving our sin offenses against Holy God is the most critical issue in all of life.

It's a big statement, but it's absolutely the case. It is why John the Baptist declared upon seeing Jesus, behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Why sin is so important and why Jesus came to die for sin is the focus of our Easter weekend program with Pastor Greg Gilbert today. He's a senior pastor at Third Avenue Baptist Church and the author of several books.

Let's get to the first segment of that interview. Pastor Greg Gilbert joins us today on the Christian worldview for our seventh year now of doing a special Easter program. And Greg, thank you once again for coming on the program this Easter. Before we get to our topic about how Christ had to die to take away the sins of the world, I'd like to ask you about the topic that everyone is thinking and talking about right now, of course, the coronavirus. As you look back in the last, the events of the last four to six weeks and all that's taken place, whether it's from the response to the pandemic, the shutdowns, the economics, the media coverage, the worldview behind this, what are the top three or four things that come to your mind with this global pandemic, the coronavirus? David, it's great to be with you again. I'm surprised, but it's amazing that this is the seventh time we've done this right in this week before Easter.

So it's going to be with you. The pandemic, that's what we're all, that's kind of what we're all thinking about these days, isn't it? I have a lot of thoughts about it like everybody else. I don't know that they're, I don't know that they're any more profound than, than anything anybody else is thinking about, but I've been struck by just how much I have valued and missed the gathering of my church, Third Avenue. We're still doing live streaming and that sort of thing, but people ask me every once in a while if they can come to those services, you know, cause we do it, we do the whole service. We have musicians and I'm in the pulpit preaching and everything and people will say, well that looks like a lot of fun, you know, to be there with those other people doing that service.

And I tell them, no, no, it's, it's not fun. It's a very sad sort of thing because we all come in, we do our jobs and then we leave and the place is empty as we're doing our jobs. And it's just a stark reminder of how, how sad it is that we're not able to gather together.

So I'm ready to regather. That's, that's one thing. I think another thing that struck me about this and it's, it's happened in a couple of times in my life, but I've been reminded again of how thin civilization is, how thin normal is and how fragile it is. If you think, you know, even back a month ago, everything was normal and now just four weeks later, a lot of what we take to be normal civilization is just gone and you have the sense that for all the pride we human beings have in what we've accomplished, it doesn't take much of a shove to set it all on, on its edge. And you can, you can just kind of feel that one more shove could send the thing tipping over the edge.

You know, for example, what if, what if the country can't manage to pull off a normal election in November of 2020? That is exactly the sort of little shove in the shoulder that could send the thing, could send the thing careening off the edge. So I think there's, I think there's a lot of danger in this, not just, not just from the disease itself, but from how, how society handles the thing. So it's just interesting that we humans are not in as much control of things as we think we are. And I think this is a pretty stark, though not as stark as it has been in history, but a pretty sharp reminder from the Lord that we are not in control. I think you're exactly right about those observations.

Greg Gilbert with us today on the Christian worldview, the senior pastor of Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky. Our topic today is, is about sin and why the Son of God had to enter our world to die for our sin. One more question on the virus here. Is this virus, is this coronavirus an example of how sin affects our fallen world? Yeah, certainly. Especially in the sense that it makes people sick and it makes people die because you just wouldn't have had that in Eden before humanity fell, right?

I don't know if you would have had viruses, right? Maybe viruses existed and they did good things to human beings before the fall. This thing's a reminder that this world has fallen. It groans in anticipation of its redemption from, you know, like, like Paul says, it's bondage to decay. And so it's a good reminder to us that we live in a fallen hard world.

We certainly do. Now on this issue of sin, why don't we get a working definition of what this little three letter word is? When you're explaining this to your congregation, how do you define sin? I generally think the best way to define it is rebellion against God. Now that can take a lot of different forms, right? It can be an action, it can be a thought, can be a motivation.

We know that it's, it's just kind of who we are as human beings post fall. But essentially it is to say, I don't want God's authority over me. I don't want him to be the king. I don't want him to wear the crown over my life. I'm going to wear the crown and therefore I'm going to disobey him. I'm going to be apathetic toward him. I'm going to ignore him. I'm going to deny his existence. Again, it's a million different forms, but it is to say, I do not want the Lord's throne to rule over me.

I'm going to rule myself. I think that's just a great way and a simple way and an understandable way of defining it. Greg Gilbert with us today, talking about why Christ had to die to take away the sins of the world on this special Easter program here on the Christian worldview. Do you think, Greg, that the view of sin today in our society, and I'll even include even within the church, has a lower view, a less serious view of sin than previous, let's just specify like American generations. If so, if there's a lower view of sin, a less of a serious view of sin now, why do you think that is? If we take society as a whole, it seems to me that for a while, society was trying to get rid of the idea of sin. The sexual revolution was about getting rid of the idea of any kind of sin.

Anything you do, anything you are is just fine. I think that proved untenable. We may be getting to the point that it's untenable sexually also, but society as a whole has rediscovered the idea that there are certain things you can do that are wrong. The society is fumbling around, arguing with one another about exactly what those wrong things are. Critical race theory is going to tell you that it's these certain things that are wrong. Critical gender theory is going to tell you that it's these things that are wrong.

The political right is going to tell you that it's these things that are wrong. There's a sense of wrong, but we're arguing about what that is. We've basically kept the idea of a sin, but we've gone godless with it. That's taken away our ability to know exactly what it is we think is wrong. I think what's interesting about the whole thing though is that society's newfound kind of acknowledgement that there are wrong things that you can do, it seems to not have any concept of forgiveness to go along with it, which is so interesting, right?

Because for a long time it was, well, we're just going to forgive everything. There is no sin. Everything is off the table. Now there is sin, and if you commit one of them, you get canceled. That's right.

That's it. There is no redemption. There is no forgiveness. You are gone. So give us an example of this that you see taking place in society, like this new definition of sin and this cancellation.

Where do you see that? Well, for example, on social media occasionally you'll have somebody pop up into the news and they're giving some amount of money to charity or they're creating some good thing in society, and you'll actually see people diving back into their social media feeds to pull up one or two things that are wrong, things that they've said that are wrong, and that's used then to sort of cancel out all the good that they're doing now. There's no amount of apology that scrubs out that wrong. You're just done for a really, really long time. People have lost their jobs. They've lost positions.

You're just canceled. So it's funny. Society has really slingshotted over the last few decades and maybe even years from there is nothing that's wrong to there are things that are wrong but there's no redemption for them. When Christianity has been sitting here the whole time saying there are things that are wrong, the Lord has defined them for us, and in his grace he also offers forgiveness, which is a workable worldview that the world just is going to flail around and miss until they turn back to God and his word. Greg Gilbert again with us today in the Christian Royal View, the senior pastor of Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky.

Their website is thirdavenue.org. You can go there to hear Greg's sermons. Ezekiel 18 verse 20 says the person who sins will die. Romans 6 23, the wages of sin is death and then ultimately judgment. Why is sin so serious to God that he sent his son to die in our place for?

In other words, I think the world doesn't get this one. You often hear it's disproportionate punishment to send your son, you know, God killed Jesus, you know, there's books written with that kind of that title and so forth. Why is sin so serious to God? Well, because it's not just a sort of heavenly traffic violation. You know, it's not just a mistake.

It's not just falling short of the mark. The whole Sunday school illustration that we use sometimes of sin being an archery word that means to miss the mark. That's not what sin is at all. If you want to use an archery illustration, sin is not that we're aiming for the target and we just miss it. It is to turn around and aim the arrow at the heart of the king. We are, we are in rebellion against God and you know, I mean you can just take it to the earthly level.

No king worth his salt is going to allow a rebellion against him to stand. So you multiply that by the infinite worth and honor and dignity and majesty of the God of the universe and our little puny firing of an arrow, you know, sin toward his heart is an infinite offense. When Adam takes the fruit from the tree, he's not just making a little mistake. He's not even just grabbing a little piece of fruit. What he's doing is, is looking at the command of God.

Don't eat this fruit. And then he's listening to Satan who says, you can be like God. In other words, you can have the throne, Adam, if you will just throw off God's authority from you. And then Adam looks back at the tree and says, I do not like this command hanging over me. I'm breaking it and daring God to do something about sin is not a minor thing. It's a massive thing.

Even just pushing it a little bit further. Why is the wages of sin death? Why couldn't God have said in the day that you eat of it, you will surely turn into a toad or something. It's because death is the natural and right consequence when you declare independence from and war on the very source of your life. The source of your life is God.

And when you turn around and declare independence and war on him, the natural consequences of that is death. Stay with us more on the Christian worldview on this Easter special right after this. People everywhere have anxiety about the coronavirus pandemic.

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We'd love to send that to you. Our guest today is Greg Gilbert, the senior pastor of Third Avenue Baptist Church. We're talking about why did Jesus have to die to take away the sins of the world.

Let's get to the second segment of that interview. As we get towards the sacrifice of Christ and why he died to take away our sins, what was the Old Testament sacrificial system like? You know, sometimes people think, well, say the Christian faith is a bloody religion and in a way it is. The priests were shedding the animal's blood that was required by God. What was that sacrificial system like with the killing of animals and how did that lead forward then to the Lamb of God Christ who would take away the sins of the world? The Lord started teaching humanity about the idea of a sacrifice as soon as Adam and Eve sinned. Do you remember he clothed them in animal skins?

Well, where did he get those? He got them by killing an animal, right? And so in order for Adam and Eve to be clothed, an animal had to die. So in a very embryonic form, God was teaching Adam and Eve right there that in order for you to be cared for, some penalty has to be paid in the form of death. That continued and really came to a full form at the Passover. When the people of Israel were in slavery in Egypt, the Lord wants to rescue them.

You know the story. He says, send in the angel of death through the land. The shocking thing about that was that the angel of death was going to come through Israelite lands too.

The Israelites were in certain cities on the outskirts of the cities of Egypt and up until that point, the plagues had not fallen on the cities of the Israelites, but this one was going to. Death was going to fall on them. The message, of course, being that you're guilty too, you deserve to die for your sins, but if you'll do what I tell you, go get a lamb, kill it, put the blood on the door. When the angel of death sees that blood on the doorpost, he'll pass over your house. Well, that's where the whole idea kind of came to its full form. And then once the law was given at Sinai a few months later, a few weeks later, that took the form of a whole system of sacrifices of animals, which were making the same point that sin demands a penalty, that penalty is death, but that penalty doesn't have to be paid by the sinner.

It can be paid by something or ultimately someone else. Senior Pastor Greg Gilbert of Third Avenue Baptist Church is our guest this Easter weekend here on the Christian Real View. This is our seventh year annual doing an Easter special with him as he explains an element of this most important moment in history. Greg says in James 2 verse 10, for whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all. Recognizing yourself as a sinner in need of God's forgiveness is the prerequisite for coming to saving faith. If you don't recognize you're a sinner, why would you want to be saved? If you don't think sin brings forth death and judgment, what do you need to be saved from? With the human tendency, and we all have this, towards self-righteousness and comparison of ourselves with others who we deem worse than ourselves, should we try to get someone quote unquote unsaved, like make them aware of their sin?

Or how do you do that? Because there's such a tendency for people to profess their own self-righteousness, help them see their sinfulness, basically. How do you do that in a conversation with a non-believer when there's such a tendency towards self-righteousness and not seeing your own sin?

I think you're right. It's a prerequisite. You're not going to see your need for a savior unless you see your need to be saved, right? So you have to bring people to the point of realizing that there is a problem. The New Testament, Jesus, the apostles, they do that in a lot of different ways. The Sermon on the Mount is primarily a way of saying your problem is deeper than you think it is. He was saying to the Israelites, you think your problem is just that you have trouble coming up with enough caveats to the law that you're not explicitly violating one of them. And Jesus' whole point is no, no, no, that's not your problem.

Your problem is that your very heart violates the spirit of the law. So I think that's a strategy that you can use with people to convince them of their own sinfulness. You know, I think if you can just get people to be honest with themselves though, they tend to know that everything is not right.

People are not honest about that with themselves or with others, but generally people know themselves well enough. And all you've got to do is kind of pull them out of that a little bit, get them to be honest, and then the real job becomes convincing them that it is in fact Jesus who can save them. How about the good works aspect of it, that they've sinned, but then there's the other human tendency to say, well, you know, I've done a lot of good in my life. You know, I've gone to church. I've been really kind to people. I'm a good person. The idea being that, well, my good either outweighs the bad I've done or my good cancels out the sin I've done.

How do I explain that? Why doesn't the good that we do, so to speak, the good, why doesn't that cancel out the bad we've done? Every human being has a tendency toward self-justification. We want a works righteousness, and every religion in the world except Christianity says that the way you're saved is by doing more good things than bad things or at least enough good things to make yourself worthy of being saved. That's the basic human, most fundamental human religion in the world, and Christianity just says something different. Well, it says a couple of things. It does say the bare minimum that, like James says, if you've broken the law at one point, that wasn't just a mistake.

That was rebellion against the creator, and no amount of good works that you pile up on top of that take that rebellion away. It just doesn't. It would be like me saying, if I get a traffic ticket for speeding, it's not going to be a winning argument in court. Well, Judge, look at all the times I didn't speed. Doesn't that overwhelm this one time that I did speed? His answer's going to be, no, that's great that you didn't speed all those other times, but you did in this time, and there's consequence for that.

Nobody actually believes that. My kids can't do it in school. If my daughter misses a math problem on her test, she's going to lose some points for that.

You can't just say, well, I did better on these other ones. The point, though, more important than that, though, is that sin is not just a thing that's on us that doesn't affect our very being. Sin is in us, and it is of us.

It's not just something you can wipe off. Paul says it in Ephesians, chapter two, we are by nature children of wrath. We deserve what is coming to us. I don't think you have to look very hard into human history to see that we humans are capable of some awful, awful stuff. You can't live on this side of the Holocaust, on this side of World War II, on this side of American chattel slavery and think that we humans are basically good.

We're not. At the first opportunity, we do horrific things to one another, and we often do it in the name of telling somebody that it's for their own good. The human race is not good, and we deserve what's coming to us, and I think anybody that's honest about that will admit it. During the crucifixion of Christ, there was another subtext event going on with these two criminals being crucified on either side of Christ, who were both mocking him as Christ was being crucified. You know, save yourself, and if you're the Son of God, they were mocking him. Then all of a sudden, one of them has this incredible change of heart, and as the other one continues to mock him, this other one has a change of heart and says, why are you mocking him?

He's not guilty of doing anything. All of a sudden, this one realizes he's a sinner, and that the God-man on the cross next to him is the only thing that can save him from his sin. Do you have any idea what causes that turnaround, where someone goes from mocking Christ to all of a sudden realizing their own sin? What takes place for a person to get to that really important point of understanding, yes, I am a sinner, I've sinned against God, a just God is going to judge me for my sin, and Christ is my only way to believe in what he did on the cross for me, it's my only way to be saved.

What do you think takes place when that occurs? Ultimately, and most importantly, the Holy Spirit regenerates, gives life. The Holy Spirit acts in your heart to raise you to spiritual life. You go from being dead in your trespasses and sins to alive, and that's a miracle. Salvation is not just a decision. It's not just turning over a new leaf to be saved and become a Christian is a miracle. It's got the power that could create a universe, and it is that kind of miracle to bring someone from death to life. Now, the Holy Spirit uses means to do that.

Sometimes we experience it as a sort of explosive conversion in our lives. Others of us experience it as a more slower kind of coming to life, so the Holy Spirit does it in all kinds of ways. Apparently, that thief on the cross had one of those explosive conversion moments where the Holy Spirit brought him to life even as he was physically dying, and he put it all together.

I think we assume sometimes that those thieves on the cross and basically everybody in the Bible, I think we assume that they're not very smart, but that thief was brought up studying the Old Testament. All those phrases that were being thrown at Jesus with such irony, and he's listening to him, he's hearing him, it seems to me that he probably just put it all together from the prophets and realized when the Holy Spirit regenerated him, this is him. Then he put together what this person could do for him, and he had faith in Christ. Okay, our guest today here on the Christian Real View is Greg Gilbert, the senior pastor of Third Avenue Baptist Church. You know, the message of this weekend, the Gospel, is so simple, even a child can understand it. You're a sinner, and Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, but the elements of it are so profound. It's so inexhaustible to better understand just the amazing thing that God did for us through Christ this weekend. We have much more coming up on the Christian Real View.

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Your email and mailing address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time. Call 1-888-646-2233 or visit theChristianworldview.org. Listening to the Christian World View radio program for our annual Easter weekend special, our guest is Pastor Greg Gilbert.

He's the senior pastor of Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky. He's also the author of several books, two of which we carry in our store at theChristianworldview.org. One is called What is the Gospel?

This is a very, very good book, very clear about what we're talking about today. What is the Gospel? The other one is Who is Jesus? You can get both of those by going to our website theChristianworldview.org.

In addition to some other featured resources that we have right now, like How to be Free from the Fear of Death, which is a little 20-page booklet by our guest from a previous week in the program, Ray Comfort of Living Waters. We're focusing today, this is the seventh year in a row that we've had Greg Gilbert on with us, and we focus on a different element of Easter every year. For instance, we've done Why Christ Needed to be Fully God and Fully Man, Who Jesus Is and How You Are Called to Respond. We talked about what does it mean that Christ is the Believer's High Priest and other topics like that over the last seven years. Today we're talking about why did Jesus have to die to take away the sins of the world?

People think that God is sending his own son to die, and what's the big deal, so to speak, about sin? That is the question that Greg Gilbert is addressing today. If you missed any of the program, we have a little more left with him, but if you missed any, you can always go back to our website theChristianworldview.org to hear the replay of it. You can also get the podcast for free.

It airs in a lot of different formats, so lots of ways to hear it. All right, we have one segment, short segment left with Greg Gilbert. Let's get to that, and then we'll follow up with some conversation afterwards. Our topic is Why did Jesus have to die to take away the sins of the world? And that phrase, take away the sins of the world, comes from what John the Baptist said about Christ in John 1. He saw Christ and he said, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. It says in 1 John 1.7, if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin.

So for the person listening today, Greg, who's trying to figure out maybe what Easter is all about, is thinking about this time this year with coronavirus and how much the world has changed, is thinking about their own spiritual life and God and what's going on here, how would you explain to someone today how does this blood of Christ cleanse us from all sin and what they need to do to believe that by faith? You know, I did a video for my church for that we're going to send out on Good Friday and I talked about something I read in an article about portraiture in the Renaissance and how these very powerful rich men usually would sit for portraits and the artists would draw them in all of their grandeur. But the artists for a time began to include what they called a memento mori in the painting, a Latin phrase that means remember you must die. So for example, in the portrait, a shelf in the background of the man who's being painted and the artist would paint onto that shelf a clock, for example, set at one minute until midnight, or they would paint a bowl of fruit on a table and put one rotten piece of fruit in the bowl, just as a reminder to that man that no matter how great you are, no matter how much money you have, death is always at the door. They even began after a while to put a little tiny hidden human skull somewhere in the painting.

It might be hidden somewhere in a code kind of way. It might just be peeking out from under the robes at the feet of the man being painted, but it was just a way of saying you're going to die. I was struck thinking about that, that over the past month, we have had more of those opportunities to remember death than most of us are used to having in a year or a decade. I mean, death is just stalking the land right now.

And so I think it's on our minds. In God's grace, though, he's put this thing right on top of a remembrance of the man who succumbed to death but then conquered it on Easter, the one man who has taken the keys of death and hell and has the ability to set us free from the fear of it and from its dominion. And the way he does that, of course, is by exhausting the curse of death that hangs over us because of our rebellion against God. We deserve to die. We deserve to die spiritually. We deserve to be separated from God. We deserve to be forsaken by God. And on the cross, Jesus exhausts all of that.

He takes it all until it's got nothing else to fire at us. If we embrace him in trust and in faith, then the victory he's won over death and over hell becomes our victory too. In the same way that our sin becomes his and he dies for it, his victory over death and hell and sin becomes ours because we're united to him by faith. So the king who conquers death has, in his grace, said, I want this to count for all of my people as well.

The key to the whole thing is that you have to be one of the king's people in order for that benefit to come to you, which means bowing your knee to him, trusting in him and relying on him to save you. Thank you so much for explaining that message of Easter, the gospel message, the good news that despite the fact that we're sinners, despite the fact that our sin deserves death, this is why Jesus Christ came and lived a perfect life and died a substitutionary sacrifice on that cross for our sin to pay the penalty for our sin and to give us his righteousness. And Greg, we always appreciate the way you carefully, thoughtfully, but above all, biblically share that gospel and explain that gospel message. And we just continue to wish all of God's grace and best to you and Third Avenue Baptist and your family. And thank you again for coming on the Christian worldview radio program. Amen. Thank you, brother.

It's always a joy to be with you. OK, that was Greg Gilbert, everyone here on the Christian worldview today on our Easter special program. There are not too many others that I know of that explain the gospel as clearly as he does. It's easy to confuse things with lots of elements to it. It's very simple, but can be made very complicated.

It can be people can emphasize the wrong things. He does a very good job of emphasizing the most important parts of the gospel, that God is holy and just. He's our creator. He's our sustainer of life.

He's our just judge for all of mankind. And we are sinful. We are separated from God because of our sin. And there's no way we can erase, though, our sinfulness through doing good works, through trying to be a good person that doesn't work with God. The Bible clearly teaches it's not by works of righteousness that we have done. But the good news is of this weekend, Easter weekend, is that Christ came to live a perfect life so he could be that perfect lamb of God as they sacrificed spotless lambs for centuries in the nation of Israel. That was just a temporary looking forward to the actual spotless, perfect, sinless lamb, Jesus Christ, who would come to take away the sins of this world. He's our only way that our sin can be paid for and God's wrath and justice can be satisfied over our sin. And that's the message.

And so what do we do with that information? Well, we must receive it and believe it, trust in it by faith alone in what Christ did for us. You know, it says in Philippians chapter 2 5, this is a powerful passage that says, Have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although he existed in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a bond service when he came to earth and being made in the likeness of men, being found in appearance as a man. Here he is on earth, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Verse 9, Philippians 2, For this reason also, God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father. And so based on that passage, we are each compelled to make one of two choices in life with regard to Jesus Christ. Choice number one is you can choose to bow willingly now to him as Savior and Lord while we are alive on the earth. And the result of bowing willingly now is that God promises to forgive us of our sin and grant us eternal life in heaven.

That's choice one. According to this passage, choice two is you can choose to not bow to him now while you're on earth, but just know, as this passage promises, that you will bow unwillingly to him later after you die. And the result of that choice will be that you will pay the eternal penalty for your own sin in hell.

So why would anyone choose the second option? I mean, God's given us the gracious and merciful opportunity to have Jesus pay our penalty for us if you bow willingly to him now. Otherwise, as that passage says, you will bow unwillingly to him later. The passage says at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father. That is a myth for believer or unbeliever. We're all going to bow. You can bow willingly now, and the result of that is eternal life, or you can bow unwillingly after you die, and the result of that is eternal damnation in hell.

So why would anyone choose that second option? Because the evidence is all here of who Jesus is, that he's the Son of God, and what he did on the cross, his substitutionary atonement for the sins of mankind on the cross. I mean, there's no dispute that a man named Jesus lived. It's just about, is that man who he claimed to be?

Is he the Son of God and the Savior of mankind? People will say, well, I don't want to go after being a Christian. There's lots of hypocrites in the church, and the Bible says there's only one way. I can't accept that, that there's only one way to God.

There's got to be lots of different ways. What about people in other parts of the world who'd never have a Bible, don't know about Jesus, or there's so much pain and suffering. How could a good God allow all that? There are answers to all of those things.

There are reasons to believe in Jesus, and we'll get into those after this final break of the day here on the Christian Real View. David Wheaton here to tell you about my boy, Ben, a story of love, loss, and grace. Ben was a yellow lab and inseparable companion at a stage in my life when I was single and competing on the professional tennis tour. I invite you to enter into the story and its tapestry of relationships with Ben, my aging parents, with a childhood friend I would finally marry, and ultimately with God, who caused all things, even the hard things, to work together for good. Order the book for your friend who needs to hear about God's grace and the gospel, or the one who has gone through a difficult trial or loss, or just a dog lover in your life. Signed and personalized copies are only available at myboyben.com or by calling 1-888-646-2233.

That's 1-888-646-2233 or myboyben.com. People everywhere have anxiety about the coronavirus pandemic. What will happen to their health, their job, their finances, the future? There is also heightened spiritual awareness. Why is God doing this?

Am I right with him? We encourage you to order Ray Comfort's 20-page booklet, How to be Free from the Fear of Death, which explains how one can have peace with God and a confident hope for this life and the next through the good news of the gospel. If you have never contacted the Christian Real View, request the booklet How to be Free from the Fear of Death for free by calling us at 1-888-646-2233.

For everyone else, you can order as many as you'd like for 50 cents per booklet, perfect for sharing with others. To order, go to thechristianworldview.org or call 1-888-646-2233. That's thechristianworldview.org. Final segment of the day here on the Christian Real View radio program.

Thanks for joining us for this special Easter program, Why Did Jesus Have to Die to Take Away the Sins of the World. I'm David Wheaton, the host. Our website is thechristianworldview.org. There's lots to do at that website. One important thing would be to sign up for our free weekly e-newsletter and not only to get the preview and lots of updates and things for free on that newsletter, but we also include the short takes, which are highlights of the program weekly that come to your inbox.

It's a great short format to be able to catch three or four short highlights of the program every week. You can get that by just typing in your email address at our website, thechristianworldview.org. Before this last break, we were talking about the fact that Philippians 2 says that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. So we really have two options, right? It's a binary choice. You can choose to bow willingly now to Him as Savior and Lord while we're alive on earth and the result of that choice is that God promises to forgive us and give us eternal life. The second choice is we can choose to not bow now, but be assured that you will bow unwillingly later after you die because every knee will bow and every tongue will confess and the result of not bowing now is that you're going to have to pay the eternal penalty for your own sin in hell.

So why would anyone choose that second choice, that second option? Well, you often hear there's hypocrites in the church. Well, of course, there's hypocrites everywhere. I mean, I don't perfectly live out the Christian life. I'm hypocritical at times.

So are you. Even if you're not a Christian, you're hypocritical. You don't perfectly live by your own particular set of values. Everyone is, no one's perfect. Only Jesus was perfect. So don't look at other people.

Look at yourself. Don't reject Christianity or reject Christ based on the hypocrisy of someone else. No one likes a hypocrite, of course.

No, you can't stand before God someday and say, well, there's lots of hypocrites in the church. That's why I didn't believe in your son. That's not going to work. But there's only one way some will complain.

This isn't fair to people who have never heard. Leave the fairness and the justice to God. God is perfectly just. No one's going to stand before God and say, you didn't give me a chance.

You created me purely for damnation. That's not the God of the Bible. The fact is that God has graciously provided one way.

At least He did. We don't even deserve to have one way to be saved through Christ. But graciously, mercifully, He did provide one way through believing in His Son. And for those in the other parts of the world that you're so concerned about, you know, God is well beyond His ways or well beyond your ways or well beyond your thoughts.

He knows how to bring others to saving faith in Him, even in cultures that don't have a Christian background like America. So I think the reason that we don't accept that second, that the option of bowing to Jesus now, though, is the reason that too many people choose to not bow to Him now is that what Greg Gilbert was saying today, we want to be king. We want to be king of our own lives. And we don't want God to be king. We want to rule.

We want to be on the throne of our own lives. We don't want to give up our sin. If sin wasn't pleasurable and didn't provide some sort of satisfaction or fulfillment to us, no one would do it. So we choose our own sin.

We choose to be our own king, rather than having God be in His rightful place as the king of our lives. But let me just say that God's way, and by the way, I remember this various, this crossroads in my own life when I was in my early 20s and realizing that I was going the wrong way and I was offending God and I wasn't right with God. And it was a choice of basically, am I going to go God's way or am I going to forsake my own sin? Am I going to continue with my own sin? Is it forsake my own way, my own sin and go God's way? Or am I going to continue in my own sin and go away from God? That's the choice. And I get that. I get the allure to sin.

It's strong. God's way though, I can tell you, on this side of salvation is infinitely better, infinitely than your way, than going our own way. And it isn't worth the ultimate consequences in the end. Mark, Jesus says in Mark chapter eight, He says, He summoned the crowd with His disciples and He said to them, here's the cost of following Him. If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life, in other words, if you want to rule on your own life, you're going to lose your life. But whoever loses his life for My sake and the Gospels will save it. So if you follow God's way, you follow Christ, you're going to lose your life, but you're going to save your life by going that way, your eternal life. For what does it profit a man, Jesus says, to gain the whole world, to go your own way, if you have to forfeit your soul? For what will a man give in exchange for his soul? And the answer to those two questions is you can't give anything in exchange for your soul. It says in verse 38, Mark eight, for whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, if you're ashamed of Christ, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of you when He comes in the glory of His angels, of His Father with the holy angels. So again, there's two options here. We can choose now to bow before Christ and come to Him in repentant faith, and we can not bow, but you will bow later.

Be assured of that. You know, anyone can be baptized, anyone can be to go to church, anyone can help the poor, anyone can take communion. You can check all those boxes, but that has nothing to do with bowing spiritually to Jesus, because you can just do those things and you can walk out of that place and live the rest of the week any way you want.

That's called externalism. Doing those things does not save you. But believing in Jesus as Savior and Lord means you give up the throne of your life to Him.

It's a 24-7, 365 road. It is hard to believe. I will grant you that. This easy believism, oh, just believe in Jesus and you can have your life back.

That's not true. To follow Jesus means you give up everything that you are and your human sinful desires want in favor of what God wants for your life. Jesus said again in Matthew chapter 7, Enter through the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it. So I will just encourage you this Easter weekend to enter through the narrow gate. Enter through the narrow gate of Jesus by repenting of your sin, admitting, confessing your sin to God, and believing in who Jesus Christ is, that He is the perfect Son of God, and what He did this weekend, almost 2,000 years ago, to pay the penalty you deserve to pay. He paid the penalty for you on the cross so that you could be forgiven of your sin, so that you could have peace with God, you could be reconciled to Him now during this life, and you're also going to be given eternity in heaven forever.

There's no more priceless possession than that. It is a trustworthy statement as our verse for today is deserving full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, and we're all sinners and need to be saved. Contact us if you have any questions about how to be saved.

We have a page on our website, What Must I Do to Be Saved, if you want to read more about it. That is one of our missions of this program, not only to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians, I hope that was done for believers today, but I hope if you are not a believer that you heard the clear gospel of Jesus Christ, how you can be saved, because we do live in a changing and challenging world, but there is one thing we can count on and trust in. Jesus Christ and His Word are the same yesterday, today, and forever.

We hope you all have a meaningful Easter. We'll talk to you next time on the Christian worldview. We hope today's broadcast turned your heart toward God, His Word, and His Son. To order a CD copy of today's program, or sign up for our free weekly email, or to find out how you can be reconciled to God through Jesus Christ, go to our website, thechristianworldview.org, or call us toll free at 1-888-646-2233. The Christian worldview is a weekly one hour radio program that is furnished by the Overcomer Foundation, and is supported by listeners and sponsors. Request one of our current resources with your donation of any amount. Go to theChristianworldview.org, or call us toll free at 1-888-646-2233, or write to us at Box 401 Excelsior, Minnesota 55331. That's Box 401 Excelsior, Minnesota 55331. Thanks for listening to The Christian worldview. Until next time, think biblically and live accordingly.