When God saw what He had made, He said, “It is good!” And it was very good. The people God had placed in the garden knew nothing of hunger, fear, or jealousy. They knew nothing bad. Can you imagine a place like that? It’s hard to imagine a place so different than the world we live in. It was all good. Until….
Adam and Eve had a choice. They could obey (listen to) God or do what they wanted to do. We all have this choice everyday. Do you ever not listen to your parents or teachers? God wants you to listen to them. So when you do not do what they say right away without complaining, you are not obeying God, just like Adam and Eve did not obey God.
When you make good choices, you are on the God road. But if you have EVER messed up, you are on the ME road. You chose to follow yourself instead of God. But once you are on the road to ME, you can’t get back to God. The truth is, we are all on the road of ME. (Romans 3:23)
All those bad choices, make yucky, dirty splots all over your soul. But you can’t see your soul, so you can’t see the splots either. But God can. And He is a good, pure and Holy God and can’t be near all that yucky stuff. This makes God sad, because He loves you SOOOO much and wants to be near you. So He came up with a plan. He built a bridge from the GOD road down to the ME road.
What does that bridge look like? It looks like a cross. Jesus took the punishment we deserve for all the bad choices we have made. All we have to do to get on that bridge is to BELIEVE Jesus took that punishment for us. And (metaphorically) Jesus’ blood is the soap and water that washes away all that dirt on our souls.
If people are red and God is blue, then Jesus is purple. He is both a human and God; something new. Because Jesus never sinned, He is the only one that could build the bridge between sinful people and God. And THIS is good news.