Have you ever watched an ant colony? The ants move along invisible trails that other ants have somehow marked out. Working together they carry tiny bits of dirt to the top of the anthill.
When something falls on the trail or the anthill, they scurry about frantically.
Now suppose you really care about ants and a storm is coming. Without your help the ants are going to die in a flood. You want to save them. You shout at the ants, “Move to higher ground,” but they pay no attention. You take a stick and try to redirect their trail. It doesn’t work. They think you are trying to hurt them.
Your ways are completely incomprehensible to the ants. You live on a different level—higher, richer and more advanced—and they can’t understand what you are trying to communicate. The only way for you to save the ants is to become an ant yourself and use their language to help them in a way they understand.
This is what God did for us.
Jesus came to earth to speak our language—to show us our Father’s heart of compassion and way of salvation. He became like us so we could know and experience God. Jesus took our anatomy as a human being—with a spirit, a soul and a body—so He could reconcile us to God. As a man—as a three-part being—Jesus undid what Adam had done in the fall. He restored us to God’s original design: we were created “in the image of God” (Genesis 1:27).
In becoming one of us and dying on the cross as a sinless human being, Jesus paid the price the law demanded for our sins. Adam had chosen the desires of his own soul over the will of God, but Jesus chose God’s will over the desires of His own soul. He surrendered His soul to the leading of the Spirit and gave His body to die on the cross for our sins.
In the sacrificial love of Jesus on the cross, we are set free to become the people God created us to be. When we invite God into our life, His Spirit comes to live in us and our relationship with God begins. Then, in God’s design, our soul—our mind, will and emotions—surrenders its own desires (will) and comes to rest under the loving leading of the Spirit. In this way, the body (as directed by the soul at rest in the Spirit’s leading) radiates the nature of Christ in earthly, physical reality. And so we become as Jesus was—spirit-soul-body channels through which the love of God floods the earth.
Jesus said, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” ( John 14:9). We see the love of our heavenly Father in the stories Jesus told; in the way He stopped to help the sick, interact with outcasts, and befriend sinners; in His teaching; in His prayers and in His death. We see God in Jesus’ life of love.
This Bible study is designed to help you know God as He really is and to direct your heart toward His love. Jesus’ life speaks restoration to us. We are valued and cherished beyond measure. We are precious to God. He has a grand and glorious plan for all His people.
God has chosen you. He has made a way for you to be adopted into His family. He loves you with an unstoppable, limitless love. That love came to rescue you completely, to set you free and to make you whole. Jesus came to give you eternal life in heaven and abundant life, here and now, on this earth. God created you to know His love, abide in His love and radiate His love.
Open your heart to Jesus who came to share the Father’s love with you.