The scripture for today, May 21, is 2nd Corinthians 5:21 as found in the New Testament of the Bible:
A lot of people do not understand what Jesus’ death has to do with going to heaven. The key is in Romans 3:23 that says “The wages of sin is death.” When Adam and Eve sinned, immediately their souls died, and the bodies gradually died. It’s been happening to everyone since then. But, during Old Testament times, God allowed people to make a perfect animal take their penalty, shed its blood and die in their place when they sinned.
This was only a temporary fix, however. Hebrews says the blood of animals cannot truly take away (take the substitute punishment for) sins; they are remembered again every year.(Hebrews 10:3-4).
Finally, John the Baptist announced Jesus was “the Lamb of God” (John 1:29). In order to forever stop all the sacrificial substitute dying, God prepared his own perfect Lamb ~ Jesus, who never sinned. For 33 years, God’s Word took human form in Jesus and became one of us. Then he had to shed his blood and die in our place. In so doing, he took the sin penalty forever.
Jesus did two things impossible for us to do: Live a perfect life without sin, and come back to life after he died ~ both physically and spiritually. Why? So we could do another thing that is impossible for us to do on our own: Enter heaven, the home of the perfect.
God invites us to his heaven if we will just follow Jesus. We don’t even have to be perfect ~ just forgiven. Jesus was perfect for us. What amazing love.