The brokenness we see around us every day is the result of our broken relationship with our Creator, the One who made each of us, the One who made the whole universe. God made everything with perfect wisdom and goodness, but instead of trusting God's plan, humanity turned away and chose to walk in rebellion. This caused an eternal separation between God and mankind, and the resulting brokenness led to death, pain, and destruction. Sin is the word that describes the rebellion and separation from our perfect Creator. (Genesis chapters 1-3)

God designed the world perfectly and created rules for us to follow to protect and guide us. The sin rooted deep inside our hearts causes us to deny His good rules and follow our own warped and corrupted ideas of right and wrong. We refuse to honor Him as our Creator (the One who designed every part of us), we reject His truth, and pursue destruction and pain. We hurt others and ourselves because we are still continuously in rebellion against Him, influenced in every way by sin. (Isaiah 64:6; Romans 1:18-32, Romans 3:10-18)

The Creator of the universe is perfect in every way, which also means He is perfectly just and fair. Just as we demand justice when we see wrongs committed, on a much larger scale justice must be served when God's perfect and good laws are broken. The fair consequence of sin (the breaking of His good laws, rebelling against Him, and causing pain and destruction) is death. Physical death entered into the world in the form of sickness, pain, and the death of our physical bodies. Spiritual death also occurred, blinding hearts to the true Source of help, comfort, and peace and forever separating us from our Creator and true source of Life, even after physical death. We cannot make amends for this sin, there is no payment (God already owns everything) or enough good works (even the best things we do are corrupted by sin) we could present that would cancel out the sin that affects every part of us. Our sin deserves the consequence it receives, an eternity of separation from the perfect Source of love, goodness, light, and truth. (Romans 1:32, Romans 5:12, Ephesians 2:1-3)

In addition to being perfectly just and fair, God is also perfect in wisdom, mercy, and love. He saw humanity's desperate situation. He knew there was no way for us to redeem ourselves and pay the insurmountable debt we owed to Him. He saw us, entangled in death and sin, broken, helpless, and He made a way for us to be free, whole, healed. He knew nothing created could pay the price owed, so He gave His own Son - Jesus Christ - who existed with God from eternity, to take our place and pay our debt. Jesus stepped out of the perfection of heaven and became part of humanity. Fully God and fully man. Because He was fully God, He was able to live a perfect, sinless life. Because He was fully man, he suffered and experienced the pain and death that justice required. He then conquered death by His resurrection, overcoming victoriously as only He could. (John 1:1-5, Romans 3:23-24, Romans 5:8, Romans 6:23, Philippians 2:6-8, 1 Corinthians 15:3-4, 1 Corinthians 15:20-28)

Only by the way God provided through Jesus Christ is a person able to be free from the entanglement and burden of sin and have full access to the Creator for the wisdom, help, and love desperately needed. Faith is the necessary response to the work Jesus did - believing that He truly paid your debt earned by sin and is your only hope for escape from eternal judgment. Turning to God and believing that He made a way in Christ acknowledges His perfections and the complete dependence on Him to truly save from sin and death. Because Jesus Christ conquered sin and death for you, by trusting in Him to save, you now are able to experience the healed relationship with the Creator forever. Faith is the commitment to honor Him and believe His word is true and live the way He requires, by His help. You are not alone in this either - God gives us the Holy Spirit to help us walk with Him and hear His voice. God has given everything needed for a restored relationship with Him, and we participate in that relationship when we trust and believe in His gift and rescue found in Jesus. (John 3:16, Ephesians 2:4-10, Romans 6:23, John 14:26, Colossians 1:21-23, Romans 8:1-2, Romans 10:9-10).