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     This looks like a lot of scripture, but this is the record of Jesus' suffering, agonizing death and victorious resurrection.  We all need to reread and remember what He did for us.  I have been bought with a high price.  I was worthless, yet the price to redeem me from my rightful and deserved punishment was exorbitant.

     If someone risks his or her life to save another, we consider that person a hero.  If a person dies to save another, he or she is even more honored as heroic.  If the person saved was a stranger, the esteem escalates.

     What if the person saved was considered valueless as a person?  How many people would risk their lives to save a criminal, or a repulsive stranger?

     Jesus did not just risk His life for me.  He knowingly and willingly submitted to the most extreme torture and horrible death imaginable, to save me, a lost sinner doomed to eternal damnation.  He could have looked around and decided the human race wasn't worth it.  But the Father loves us, and Jesus loves us.  They do not want me or you to be eternally separated from that love.  The love of God is purer and higher than anything we can imagine.  What we call love, even the strong love bonds between a parent and child, is a mere shadow of the love of God.

      He paid the price for my sin.  I couldn't pay it.  Even if I had died as He did, it would not have been enough.  Redemption from sin requires a perfect sacrifice.  Jesus had no sin.  He was perfect.  He was the only human to ever live that could enter heaven on His own merit.  Death, eternal death, is the natural consequence of sin.  Jesus had no sin, so when He died physically, He conquered death.  Death could not hold Him.  He rose again.  His sacrifice broke our bondage to death.

     But we can still choose death.  We do not have to accept His sacrifice.  Each person has a choice.  Jesus has paid the debt of sin and conquered death.  If a person turns down His gift of salvation from death, that person must pay the debt themselves.  To pay for their own sin is to spend eternity in hell.  Eternity.  Forever and ever, paying for sin and never paying off the debt.  Forever separated from God.  Forever suffering the torment of hell.

     Hell is a real place.  God did not intend for humans to go there.  But He will not force salvation on anyone.   We have a choice.  You can go to hell if you want to.  Or you can be born again into God's family.  You can accept His gift of salvation and be adopted by God the Father.  He wants to be your Father!  He wants to care for you here and prepare a place for you in His kingdom to live with Him forever.

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     You will live forever somewhere.  I beg you to choose life and not death.

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...these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.                  John 20:31    (NKJV)  

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