Jesus was the perfect sacrifice. When Jesus died and was resurrected, He defeated Satan. The scripture tells us that He made a public display of the devil. He led captivity captive and Jesus, once and for all, did what He came to earth to do. He did what God told Him to do.

The Bible says that the reason the Son of Man was manifested was to destroy the works of the devil. What were the works of the devil? The work of the devil was to destroy God's creation, man.

"The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly" (John 10:10).

The devil came into the Garden of Eden to tempt Eve. Adam sinned and fell short of the glory of God. Before that point he was able to walk and talk with God. But when Adam fell into sin, he separated himself from being able to fellowship with God. That's what spiritual death is. Spiritual death is separation from God.

The work of the devil was to separate man from God. In the New Testament we are told that one of the works of Jesus was to reconcile man back to God. The only way we can step into the presence of God again is for us to be cleansed of our sins and to be perfect. How can we do that? The answer is, we can't do that. It is impossible. You cannot be good enough to get into the presence of God.

That's where grace comes in. Grace is God's willingness to do for us that thing that we can't do for ourselves. What is the thing we can't do? We cannot clean ourselves up enough to go into the presence of God.

No matter how good we try to be, no matter how religious we try to be, no matter how much we tithe, no matter how much we give to the poor, no matter how many good works we do, no matter how many times we mow our neighbor's yard, no matter how much we love our spouse and kiss our kids, we cannot get ourselves good enough to stand in the presence of God. We would die.

Satan liked it that way because man was forever separated from God. If man tried to get into the presence of God, He would die. In all of the earth, the high priest, once a year, one man out of all the millions of people on the earth, got to go into the Holy of Holies. But even that was marginal. The sacrifices of the blood of bulls and goats had to be done just the perfect way.

But God had a plan. He sent His Son here to the earth so that all mankind could be cleansed of their sin. Then all mankind could do what they were created to do, which is to fellowship with God and to live with God through all eternity.

But either man had to be perfect or he had to have the perfect sacrifice. The perfect sacrifice, the only sacrifice that was without sin was Jesus. So God sent His Son, Jesus, here to the earth and He shed His blood on a cross for you and for me.

We must understand what Jesus did. We must understand that Jesus died for our sins, and accept Him as Lord and Savior. That's what we call becoming saved and born again. Without the blood of Jesus, we could accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior and it wouldn't do us any good at all. Without His perfect sacrifice, there is no remission of sins.

But because of His sacrifice we now have the ability to spend eternity with God. All we have to do is receive Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior by faith. All the work for salvation is complete. God's plan is in place. The choice is ours. Choose life!

Larry Ollison Ministries
All rights reserved. Used by permission.