A Bridge Across the Impossible Gap

Does it ever feel like God is distant? Maybe even nonexistent? That even if you were to pray to Him, He wouldn’t hear you?

When we come to the end of ourselves and realize the things around us are ultimately uncontrollable by our own power, the thought of there not being a loving and all-powerful God who is superintending the world can lead to real fear and hopelessness.

But God is real, and though there is a wide distance between Him and people, He has done everything to close that distance, even providing a Bridge for us to reach Him. He has done everything possible to have a relationship with us and to give us all the blessings of Heaven. It’s up to us if we respond to His offer.

God Created Us

God created all things, including us. He was intimately involved in forming humanity into His image, wanting us to shine His goodness and glory in all the world. He gave humans the mission of reproducing and multiplying life, and of overseeing the earth that He created. What a responsibility! In the beginning, He was ever-present with them, empowering them for this mission and providing them with the full blessings of life in a perfect paradise.

What set the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, apart from the rest of creation, was their ability to choose. They had the ability to either obey God or disobey God. To trust God or reject Him.

Sin Separated Us

When Adam and Eve fell to temptation to disobey God, thinking that they could create their own destiny apart from Him, they opened themselves up to the infection of sin, which separated them from God’s presence and destined them for death – immediate spiritual death, and eventual physical death.

Sin created an unfathomably deep and uncrossable gap between all subsequent humans and God. The only way to experience true life, apart from sin’s curse, would be to find a way back to Him. But born with a sin nature, we couldn’t possibly get there on our own. For sin to die, so do we. But if death was the only way, then where is our hope?

Jesus Died For Us

Our hope is in Jesus Christ alone. Sent from heaven, He was the Son of God and took on human flesh, becoming like one of us.

Jesus “made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:7-8).

Jesus came “in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh (Romans 8:3).

But Jesus was not simply a human like we were. He was fully God, coming to earth to pay the penalty – death – that sin deserves. In a work that only God could do, He made Jesus, “who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Jesus became all of humanity’s representative before God, the righteous Judge who must punish sin, and Jesus became humanity’s reconciliation to God.

Christ died for all people. In Him, sin was paid for, while allowing us the opportunity to live again, apart from sin’s power over us (see 2 Corinthians 5:14-15). Sin’s power includes inevitable death, which Christ also overcame when He rose from the dead three days later.

When you trust in Jesus Christ for forgiveness of sin, He makes you a new creation through His Spirit now dwelling in You, and You now dwelling in Him through faith (see 2 Corinthians 5:17). He separates sin from you and gives you access to God once again. Jesus is the Bridge that gives us a way back to God and the eternal life that He wants us all to have.

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). Only through Him, by calling upon Him to save you, can you overcome the power of sin and death and live forever in Heaven with God, your Creator (see Romans 10:9, 13).

All is not hopeless. Your journey does not have to end with the hopelessness of sin and inevitable spiritual and physical death apart from God. Jesus Christ has made a way back to Him. All you need to do is accept His offer of forgiveness and trust Him as that steady Bridge that makes the way possible to eternal life.