Who wouldn’t hire this handsome man?
Well, I’m proud of my oldest boy for completing his first official job interview today! We practiced last night, he was poised and prepared, and now we wait in optimism. All of us have been there, putting lots of time, thought, and energy into what could be a very consequential and long-lasting decision.
So it’s strange and pretty tragic that we typically put a lot less time, thought, and energy into the most consequential and long-lasting decision of all: where we might spend eternity…and just as importantly, why.
Sure, we all have beliefs, traditions, or mantras that are in some way connected to our destiny. But over the years I’ve asked hundreds of people to explain why they think their fate will be what they believe it to be. It usually takes less than 5 minutes of follow-up questions for them to admit that they don’t really know. They haven’t pieced it together from beginning to end in any way that makes sense.
So I’m (hopefully) going to do that here with Christianity. After all, making sense of God’s biblical hereafter is what my free Healing Hereafter book series is all about! But don’t worry about going too deep; I’m giving you the lite version! Below is the Quick Read summary of perhaps the most important chapters of the whole series: explaining why Jesus actually works as humanity’s uniquely effective way to reach God in heaven.
Keep in mind that these “Quick Reads” aren’t meant to extensively prove anything, just intrigue more interest concerning nearly all the questions and conclusions found in the closing chapters of Booklet 2. Please explore the Full Version of this booklet for a more thorough discussion and extensive biblical and scholarly evidence supporting what’s below. And wish my son luck as he waits for news!
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Booklet 2: I Love It When a Plan Comes Together!
Chapter 3
Chapters 1 and 2 of this Booklet conclude that the uniqueness of humans derives from a non-physical, everlasting spirit that bestows truly original free-will. See the last blog post if you’d like to set the stage more before continuing. This naturally causes us to ask why God would create humans to live forever and why he would give them the ability to choose any path they want. We learn that the Bible’s clear answer is to make it possible for God to accomplish his primary purpose for humans: to seek him and find eternal, perfect community with him. As would make sense, this purpose flows directly from the unchanging set of ideals that comprise God’s nature and primarily determines how he sets up the hereafter that is described in the Bible.
Our purpose of fully engaging in intimacy with God and his perfect nature forever cannot be achieved unless we can freely choose this community and exist forever in it, hence our tenaciously original spirits. Consequently, this essential free will must also permit choosing against such community – seeking intimacy with what is not God or his perfect nature. God cannot remove this choice from us without thwarting his purpose for us.
The choice to embrace what is not God or his nature – the decision to willingly experience evil – is sin. We discover that not knowing evil versus knowing evil is precisely the choice that God gave the first free-willed humans, and it is also the choice he gives us many times each day. Very often we freely choose to know not God and evil instead of God and good. Because God’s nature is both just and merciful, we learn that the sentence for our sin is no more than its natural consequence: the knowledge or experience of evil, which cannot be fully understood unless a person dies.
For this reason, and so that a human’s pursuit of evil cannot perpetually harm others, sin must result in physical death. This leaves our free-willed imperfect spirits unable to engage in community with God in perfection, so a place without God must be created for them to spend eternity in: Hell. We discover that Hell is not simply meant for punishment; rather, its purpose is to allow our purpose to be achievable. Hell is primarily a human choice.
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Chapter 4
Our imperfection resulting from our pursuit of evil is the problem keeping us from our purpose of perfection with God in Heaven, so the only way to solve our problem is for our imperfection to be completely removed. We consider the various types of solutions that have been offered, and we find that all but one of them demonstrate the ineffective and distinctly human goal of either diluting imperfection with good deeds or ignoring it completely. Ordinary humans cannot live perfectly or undo past imperfections.
We then realize that only Jesus offers a divinely logical way to fully erase our imperfection. Because God is the offended party, he is the only one who can forgive the offense, so God becomes a human himself as Jesus, God the Son. He is tempted in every way but lives a perfect, sinless life. Never once does he use his free will to do anything other than the perfect good that he desires for everyone to be immersed in. Therefore, he does not have to know and experience evil as a result of his choices or actions, which means he is also exempt from death.
But because our willful sinful immersion in evil is what makes us deservedly imperfect, God willfully but sinlessly immerses himself in evil undeservedly to remove that imperfection. And because we must endure physical death as our punishment, Jesus willingly dies on the cross as our substitute to enable us to be released from that punishment. With our sentence served by Jesus, we are able to be considered innocent of sin and imperfection by God, giving us an alternative to the byproduct of Hell when we die: Heaven.
And to prove that he can one day free us from physical death and raise us in a perfect, imperishable body that can live forever in Heaven, as well as to exemplify the hope and victory that he offers, he returns from the grave in the resurrection. We find that it all makes sense. Our problem thwarts God’s purpose, our punishment fits our problem, and his solution solves both our problem and our punishment.
The biblical and logical way the solution is applied to fulfill his purpose for us is simply a human freely, genuinely, and persistently demonstrating sole reliance on God’s way – his salvation through Jesus – to choose an eternity with God and his perfection in Heaven, the exact opposite of the decision that caused the problem in the first place.
Having found Jesus to be the only solution to effectively remove the problem, we then ask why other solutions can’t be just as effective as Jesus or why Jesus can’t be merged with other solutions. Both questions are answered by unveiling that any configuration of multiple solutions makes no sense, is impossible, and is completely unnecessary, as long as the solution of Jesus exists and is justly made available to everyone.
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But how does God do this? What about those who die very young or without any way to understand Jesus’ solution during their earthly existence?
Great questions…and all asked and explored in Booklet 3, along with many more! But before we head there, enjoy a more thorough treatment of the above subject matter in the complete version of Booklet 2. It’s available freely and instantly here. And of course, may your free-willed decisions this weekend be wonderful for all!
