Around two thousand years ago, God sent His son to be born of a virgin named Mary. He was nothing more than a human physically, but He held the entire universe in His hands even before He became human. He was sent to bring salvation to the entire world. A baby was sent to bring salvation to the entire world. And during the time that He was on this Earth, He did just that.

Jesus Christ, through life and through death, brought salvation to all who believe.

When I was eight years old, I heard that story and for the first time it just clicked. I remember seeing the birth of Jesus explained at my uncle’s church. A teenage girl carried a baby wrapped in a blanket onto the stage. I saw the wisemen and the shepherds rushing to the scene to worship Jesus and to see the promise that God had fulfilled. The scene ended with Jesus, the baby, being glorified and an entire multitude of angels worshipping Him.

You may not have been eight years old when you heard the rest of this story. You might have been much older, and you might have had entirely different perspective on this story than an eight year old; but for some reason, it finally clicked for you. You finally see that this baby was born two thousand years ago to fulfill the will of God by preforming miracles and spreading the word of God all over the world.

Thankfully for us, the story did not end there.

As a Christian, we know that that is not where the story ends. The story does not end with a baby. We are taught that Jesus, while on the Earth, did perform miracles and do amazing things. But God’s will for Jesus to be on this Earth was much bigger than that. As an eight year old, it wasn’t the birth of Jesus that led me to a moment of genuine awe and repentance. It was what came after that. It was what the baby did after that. We see countless stories of Jesus healing the sick, raising the dead and forgiving the unforgivable. We read about the people that Jesus loved and the places that Jesus went to tell people about the love of God.

We see the story of Jesus with the Samaritan Woman and we are amazed that He could ever accept a woman like that, yet we do horrible things in our lives and we doubt that He could ever love us. We see countless stories of Jesus healing the sick, but we doubt that He could ever heal our sicknesses. We see Jesus loving the unlovable, yet we feel unlovable. We see Jesus perform miracles in other peoples’ lives, but we don’t believe that He could ever do that in ours.

With all of our doubts and fears, thank God that He didn’t end Jesus’ story with a baby in a manger.

Jesus did amazing things on Earth, but those still had nothing in comparison to what was to come. Jesus came to Earth knowing that one day God was going to call Him to give His life for us. That part was the hardest for me to understand as an eight year old. I remember watching my uncle, who played Jesus, die on a cross on the stage. He was being yelled at and murdered by evil people, and I couldn’t understand why! In that moment, I saw the significance of what Jesus did when He died on the cross. I love my uncle, and I know that he loves me, so to see him die such a brutal death was horrifying. And his wasn’t even real! I realized then, at eight years old, that Jesus loved me and that was why He died such a brutal death. Wow, Jesus loved me. That brought an entirely new meaning to that song because for the first time, I saw that God sent His son so I would never have to experience His wrath.

The older I’ve gotten, the more I can see that Jesus paid my price, and He paid yours too. You and I deserved nothing because of our sin and evil nature, yet God chose to replace our guilt with the ultimate sacrifice of love. He chose to die a brutal death so I could live — so you could live.

This is salvation.

I still don’t understand why He did what He did. When Jesus was being held on the cross, He asked God to forgive the people that were killing His physical body. “Forgive them, for they know not what they are doing!” I read that, and I can’t help but think, Yeah right, they knew exactly what they were doing. I mean, Jesus had been performing miracles and healing the sick and raising the dead, so obviously He was more than just a human. Then I am reminded that every time I doubt Him or every time that I deny His presence in my life, I am doing exactly like the angry crowd at the bottom of the cross. I am asking Jesus to die over and over again to prove to me that He loves me, when that one death should have been enough. I am doing just as the crowd was doing even though He’s shown me countless times that He is merciful and that He loves me. When Jesus said, “It is finished,” on the cross, He was saying those words to remind me that my debts were paid and that my sins no longer rested on my shoulders because He paid the ultimate sacrifice.

Maybe you haven’t ever understood why Jesus would die for someone like you. Maybe you want to tell me that Jesus could never forgive you because you are a liar or an adulterer or boastful. Maybe you did something years ago that you never forgave yourself for or maybe you are in the middle of a horrible time in your life, and the last thing that you’d ever expect is to be forgiven, especially by God. I just wanted to remind you, no matter which category you fit into, that God did not just send Jesus for the people that seem blameless or the people that didn’t do the sins that you did. God sent Jesus to die on the cross for people exactly like you and exactly like me.

You are forgiven. You are loved. No matter what you’ve done and no matter who you have become. God sent His son to die for you.

I am excited to tell you that the story does not end there, either. Jesus died a brutal death to take the blame for the sins that we have and continue to commit, but three days later, He rose again, proving that death did not have any control over Him. He proved, by coming back from the dead, that evil had no control over Him anymore.

Evil does not have control over you, either, if you know Christ.

This is all that you need to know to come into a relationship with God or to strengthen your relationship with God. No matter where you are in your relationship with Him, the fact still remains that He died for your sins and you no longer have to fear death, and you no longer have to fear living. You have been given an amazing opportunity, through the death of Jesus, to walk beside Him in the most loving and personal ways. When you know Christ, you experience His resurrection every day of your life. You have been saved. Jesus Christ is no longer in chains and is alive and free. You are no longer in chains, and you are alive and free.

I’m glad that I learned this when I was eight years old. I’m glad that I was able to lean on Jesus through every difficult situation I’ve faced since then. You and I were created in the image of God, we were washed clean by the sacrifice of the Son of God and we get to walk in close relationship with Him every day for the rest of our existence.

This is what happened that night on The Hill called Calvary.

“Do not be intimidated by extremely intellectual people that do not understand that the central purpose of the universe was that the lamb (Jesus) was slain. Knowing little but believing in it with all of your heart is better than knowing everything this world has to offer.” — John Piper