When I was a little boy, I didn’t know how to swim. But I wanted to paddle around in the lake not far from our house. My brother was 6 years older than I, and he knew how, and he wanted to try to teach me how.
We didn’t know it, but the city had done some dredging in that lake. You couldn’t see the deep dredge holes, of course. Suddenly I fell into one of them. It seemed to me like stepping off a cliff. I just went right down like a stone. Everything got dark.
I am so glad that my big brother saw me disappear beneath the water, and he rescued me. Because he did that for me, he became my “savior” from drowning.
So really I owe my life to my brother!
Now, what has Jesus done for you?
The Bible tells us that He is “the Savior of the world.” It sounds nice to say that, but what does it mean?
We are all a part of the world, so what the Bible really says is that He has saved us. But what has He saved us from? (Just today I phoned my big brother and thanked him again for saving my life long ago.) What can you thank Jesus for?
No person in the world today has actually seen Jesus, but He is a real man, and He is also God. But for sure He is one of us and He belongs to us.
The reason why we can’t see Him like we see any other person is that He is much greater than any other person. Billions of people would want to see Him (and they will see Him some day soon), but it wouldn’t be fair for Him to show Himself only to you or me. So everybody looks forward to seeing Him in person when He comes the second time. But when we do see Him we will thank Him, because He has already saved us from death.
But that’s not the ordinary kind of death that He has saved us from. It’s not the death that has happened when there’s a funeral.
Jesus tells us that a funeral isn’t about the real thing. When a person dies now, he simply goes to sleep until God’s resurrection day, when he will come up again, Jesus said that God “so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16, KJV). The death that people die now is not what that word “perish” means. When people die now it’s just like when at night you say, “Good night, see you in the morning.”
There is another kind of death—that’s what the Bible says is “the second death” (Revelation 2:11; 20:14). And that is what it means to “perish.” At the end of the great “thousand years” that are yet to come, the wicked people will be judged, and they will “perish” in the lake of fire. No resurrection from that—ever. They will just be gone forever. That’s what “hell” will be.
It’s not because God will be extra angry with them; He does not hate them. He still pities them. But they themselves have made their choice to “perish.” God won’t force them to change their minds. They don’t want to live forever in God’s kingdom. They actually want to be separate from Him and separate from His kingdom. And so, God must give them what they really want. It sounds crazy, and it is, but Jesus says that “anyone who hates Me loves death” (Proverbs 8:36). Can you imagine that?
That is what Jesus has actually saved you and me from. Take a deep breath; that is proof that Jesus has saved you from that second death because if He had not saved us from it, we would all be dead right now in it. So don’t ever think that Jesus has done nothing for you!
All this means that God intends that the life you and I have today shall be the beginning of everlasting life. And it will be so, if we “walk with Jesus.” He is not “I-want-to-be-your- Savior.” He is your Savior! Now don’t push Him away.
Little people can catch hold of big ideas!
When we think of what Jesus has saved us from, we want to say the biggest “Thank You” we can think of, because He could never have saved us this way unless He had already died our second death for us. And that’s just what He did when He died on His cross. The death He died was hell itself, the real thing.
Many people don’t see this, and that’s why they don’t give themselves to Jesus to live for Him. But now you do see it, don’t you?
I thank my brother for saving me from going to “sleep” when I was a child, in the first death. But now I thank Jesus because He saved me from the second death, and I tell Him that I am glad to obey Him and give Him my whole life.
Won’t you choose to do the same?