The CCC suggests 4 reasons why we need Jesus
457 God became man in Jesus to save us by reconciling us with God. We have all sinned. Romans 6 tells us the consequences of sin is death. Death doesn’t just mean the end of our earthly life. Death as the consequence from unrepented sin means eternal separation from God, but also separation from one another and the complete loss of happiness…
Imagine being locked in solitary confinement, completely alone – forever, with no hope that the pain would end.
That is Hell
That is what Jesus came to save us from
Why can’t God just forgive and forget the consequences?
B/C God made us free like Himself and with Freedom comes Consequences. Good choices bear good consequences, Bad choices bear bad consequences. If we want him to remove the consequences, Then He would have to remove our freedom
We would not be human
Imagine Playing a game with young child
If every time the child made a wrong move you let him take it back, Then the child was not really playing the game, was he? For God to excuse every bad move I make, He would have to take away my freedom. Rather than destroy our human dignity; God became one of us. He suffered the consequences for us; He suffered our death And rose from the dead. Since Jesus is both God and Man, He could bear the consequences as Man, He could rise from the dead b/c He is God. By His death Jesus fulfilled the consequence of our sin. By His Resurrection He conquered death
2nd Reason we need Jesus… 458 The Word became flesh so that we might know God’s love
How do we know God’s love?
He died for us
At the Last Supper Jesus tells his disciples,
“Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends…”
Then He suffered and died for us
We should Read the accounts of Jesus’ suffering and death in the Gospel
There you will see for yourself:
the outstretched arms of Jesus on the Cross,
the arms of the God who proved his love for us
by dying for you and me
this is the Revelation of God’s love
3rd Reason we need Jesus
459 The Word became flesh to be our model of holiness
Jesus reveals what God is really like;
He also reveals what we should be like
Because Jesus was fully human
He shows us how to be Fully Human
Fully Alive
He teaches us how to live
by the way He lived
He teaches us how to pray
By the way He prayed
He teaches us to live Mercy
Through his own example of Mercy
He teaches us how to fight Temptation
To be calm in the storms of life
To have courage under persecution
To deal with rejection, privation and want
To be patient in suffering and death
A wonderful old Benedictine monk, Fr. Adrian,
when we would be in the sacrament of Reconciliation
he would turn to a small statue of Jesus and say to me
How would Jesus handle these situations?
Michael you must live like the Master
Read and think about the life of Jesus in the Gospel
For we must learn to live like the Master
4th Reason we need Jesus…
460 The Word became flesh to make us partakers of the divine nature. For this is why the Word became Man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God. For the Son of God became man so that we might become God. The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he made man, might make men Gods.
The whole point of life is to be Reunited to God
Sin had separated us from Him
The distance between us was impossible to bridge
Imagine Two Shores separated by a body of water no one could swim
You would need a bridge to cross over
We need a bridge from God to man
Where are God and man joined together?
In the Body of Christ
That is why Jesus gives us the Eucharist!
The Body of Christ is the bridge to cross over to God
(John 6:54)
