“Do you remember how I told you Jesus came for two reasons?” Austin asked. “The first was to show you how to love and rely on God the father, and the second one was to forgive your sins.”
“Do you know what it means to sin? It isn’t the action of doing something wrong, like when you hurt someone’s feelings, it actually happens before then,” Austin explained.
“God the Father wants us to rely on him and love him, and that’s what Jesus wants us to do too. When we take things into our own hands and stop listening to what God wants us to do, that’s the sin. What we do after we stop listening to God is just the result of us not being with him.”
“Let me give you an example. When I was younger there was a boy, Collin, who was always mean to me. He would never share with me, and would call me names. But, I never was mean back to him."
“One day, he decided to be nice to me. That day, because he was nice, I decided to be mean to him. I was hurt, and instead of living for God, I lived for myself. That was sin.”
“Here’s another example. I know a girl who, when she was young, there was a boy who would always throw temper tantrums. One day, when the boy asked her for one of her toys, she gave it to him because she was afraid. That’s not the part where she left God. She decided that day that she would be the one to stick around the boy and try to make him happy, so she could stop him from having more temper tantrums. She hated it, but she did it anyway. She was living for the boy, and not for God.”
“God the Father won’t look at you and say you were “good,” or you were “bad,” that doesn’t matter to him. If you leave him, he will look you in the eyes and sadly ask you why you left him. If you are with him and live for him, he will hug you and hold you, and tell you how proud he is of you.”
“Does that make sense?” Austin asked, and all but Marissa nodded their heads.
“But what about my parents?” Marissa asked.
“What about them?” Austin prompted.
“Do they sin?”
“Yes.” Austin replied. “Everyone sins. You, me, Tim, Jason and everyone else. But the sinning isn’t what matters, what matters is that you do your best to rely on, and love God, he will always take you back and forgive you, no matter what.”
Marissa nodded her head.
“But things haven’t always been this way.” Austin said. “In the very beginning, when the first sin happened and God’s children didn’t listen to him, in order to spare their life an animal needed to be sacrificed. Leaving God to sin was death. They were with God fully, in life, but they left him, which was death.”
“That first sacrifice made by God was to allow them to have some sort of relationship with him, but it wasn’t enough. God would still talk to them, but it wasn’t the same as before when they were all together. They were less like a family, and while God still loved them very much it was more like he was just their leader and told them what to do. The animal sacrifice for sin was a temporary solution.”
“There needed to be a better sacrifice, so that a death could pay for life, the eternal life of everyone.”
“That’s where Jesus came in. Jesus came to be the perfect sacrifice so that through his death, we could all be with the Father through him, which is life. We can be with God the Father here on earth, and with him forever in heaven.”
“Does the difference between life and death make sense?” Austin asked. “Being with God is life, and being without him is death. Jesus being sacrificed, because he was perfect, covered our sin. That means when we leave God and sin, because Jesus died, we’re always welcome back.”
Austin could see that the three didn’t fully understand it, but they didn’t look like they could figure out why.
“Let me try to give you an image,” Austin said. “There are three people standing in God’s throne room. God The Father is the judge, and you and Jesus are standing before him.”
“God the Father says to you, ‘you left me, I want you back, but because you left, you are dead and can not come back to me alone. How can I take you back if you are dead?’”
“When God asks you this, you don’t even have to answer him, Jesus will answer for you. As you hug Jesus’ side, he will tell God The Father, ‘Dad, because I love them so much, I went to earth to be a sacrifice for them. I lived a perfect life, because it was perfect, my death covered each and every one of their sins.’”
“And with that, God The Father will step down from his seat and give you a hug, because through Jesus, you have been able to be with the Father in life.”
The three understood better now.
Read Chapter six