You may want to refresh yourself with Genesis 1 to 3 before reading this article.
On John 12:47 Jesus Christ declared to the people: “I did not come to judge the world but to save it.” What exactly did Jesus mean? Does the world need saving? What does the world need saving from?
Jesus Christ was born to be the Saviour of the world (Luke 2:11) and a lot of people testified that He is the prophesied Messiah of the Old Testament (Visit our section on Prophecies of Jesus Christ). Numerous accounts in The Bible show great men proclaiming Jesus Christ to be The Savior of the world (Titus 1:4, 2:13, 3:6; 1 Timothy 2:3, 4:10; 2 Peter 1:11, 3:18; Jude 1:25; Acts 5:31; John 4:42; 1 John 4:14). Don’t take my word for it, open your Bibles and check it out yourself!
To ask why we need Jesus Christ is to ask the question: Why do we need a Saviour? What do we need to be saved from?
We live in a fallen world because man fall short of the glory of God.
In Genesis 3, man sinned against God and thus, man forfeited his rights to be rulers of the world (we lost the glory of God). The earth became cursed and man is going to suffer because of it (Genesis 3:17). Because of the sin of Adam and Eve (Genesis 3), our bodies now decay, get sick and we grow old. Plants now develop thorns and man now has to work for food (Genesis 3:17). Eden is now cursed because man, who had dominion over it, sinned against God and handed the authority of the world to the devil.
The devil is the ruler of the world (John 12:31, 14:31, 16:11).
This is why calamities, sickness and death occur. Were these the plans of a loving God when He created the world? Absolute0y not! God created everything perfectly (Genesis 1:31); while it is the devil that prowls around as a roaring lion, seeking whom it may devour (1Peter 5:8), to steal kill and destroy (John 10:10).
It is the devil’s world and he has the authority to do anything within it. He brings forth death, diseases, depression, and all the ugly stuff that one can think of in order to have people believe that God is doing all these nonsense. The devil’s main goal: to lead the children of God away from their Father in Heaven. It is of no wonder why he is known as the Liar and the father of lies (John 8:44).
He prospers whom he wishes to prosper, anyone who belongs to the world and those who bow down to him (Matthew 4:8-9). When a child is born deformed, when ‘good’ people suffer from cancer, when death grabs hold of a 20 year-old; it is not God’s doing! The devil is god of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4) and he is the one responsible for all the nonsense; so stop blaming GOD!
Man has sinned against a Righteous and Holy God. God and His law are so Holy that one sin we commit, we should pay for it with our lives (Romans 6:23). This is the basic principle of atonement during the Old Testament: people shed the blood of a sacrificial animal to pay for their transgressions (Exodus 29). The sin offering.
Sin offerings are carried on in order for people to escape the curse of sin – death. It follows God’s basic principle: when someone commits a sin, someone should die for it. During the Old Testament, sin offerings take the form of an animal dying for man’s sin. Sounds too good to be true, right? We do something wrong and all we have to do is to kill a lamb or a goat for it. The problem here is that the bloods of animals are also tainted with the curse of the world that it can only atone for one’s past sins (Hebrews 10:4). Basically, it means that we have to keep on sacrificing animals to keep the curse of sin away from our heads! God forbid, we sacrifice 6 billion animals every year!
Job, the man of God who was tested, sacrificed animals every day, because he doesn’t know if he or his family committed any sin on the day before (Job 1:5). Solomon sacrificed thousands of animals thrice a year, and still he fell into the curse of sin. This only shows that even the greatest among us fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23) and that the blood of bulls and goats are not enough to save us from our sins.
People say that God is unfair because the world is unfair. People even argue that God is either powerless or that He is a sadist because He allows evil to reign. Let me remind everyone who challenges the righteousness of God that all of us have sinned and all of us deserve to be punished with nothing less than death.
When all of us should be burning in hell right now, A Man without sin came down from Heaven and went up the cross to be crucified as the Lamb of God so that we who deserve death may live (2 Corinthians 5:21). For God so loved the world that He gave up His only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). Jesus Christ took away all our sins and carried it on Himself. He was punished, judged, and condemned for all our sins. Because Jesus is greater than all our sins, He rose again victorious! With Jesus Christ, to be saved is the easiest thing on earth!
Our own efforts cannot save us from sin. No, not Solomon, not Abraham, not even King David nor the great apostles of old can save themselves; neither with charity, nor with good works or worldly accomplishments can we save ourselves. Man has fallen because we are born of the flesh; we are sinners and we deserve nothing more than death. WE NEED A SAVIOUR! HIS NAME IS JESUS CHRIST.