The Gift of a Second Chance

You can probably think of something you’d want to redo if you had the chance: Use different words, act differently, and maybe just pretend that the former deed never happened.

But few situations offer this opportunity. Typically, we have to deal with the consequences and somehow just learn to live with them and the regrets we carry with us. And maybe, in the best-case scenario, we can somehow make up for at least some of the lost time, lost relationships, and lost reputations. But we can never completely undo or forget what we did or what’s been done.

The First Chance

The Bible tells of one very devastating choice made by the first humans, Adam and Eve, that have been regretted by all humans ever since. Rather than enjoy the blessings of life that God had given them within His perfect order and instruction, they chose to do things their way, thinking that they would somehow be like God if they did. They were told not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, or they would die. But they allowed themselves to be deceived into thinking that this knowledge would somehow give them a superior role in creation. Instead, all they did was remove themselves from under God’s protective covering and open themselves up to the evil He had been lovingly shielding them from: sin and death.

Once they allowed that selfish desire to take root in their heart, they acted on it, and the destructive power of sin entered the world and began its work. God had given humans the unique mission of caring for and watching over the earth (see Gen. 1:27-28), but now their rebellious choice led to the earth and all its creatures having to also suffer the effects of sin and eventual death.

Bringing life into the world – both plants and other humans – would now be painful and toilsome. Relationships would be strained. There would be a constant struggle between humans and the power of sin (see Genesis 3:14-19). The consequences were immediately seen and felt. Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden and now had to learn to live in this state of separation from God’s presence and the blessings He wanted for them.

On top of that, they were barred from eating of the Tree of Life that was at the center of the Garden. If they ate from that, they would live forever. This was an act of grace by God, for now that they were infected with sin, He did not want them to live forever in that state. Death would allow the sin in them to also die. That would take care of sin. But what would that mean for the humans? Would they forever be bound up in their sin and their death be permanent too? Or was there some way that they could be separated from sin and sin’s death sentence? Would there ever be another opportunity for humans to make the right choice and gain eternal life?

The Second Chance

God didn’t leave us wondering. From the very start, He promised to send Someone to earth to crush the power of sin once and for all (Genesis 3:15). From that moment on, humans began looking for the One who would achieve that victory. In the meantime, God gave them the Law to show them how they should be apart from sin, but they had no power to continually act the right way on their own. He gave them a sacrificial system to show them that death was necessary to cover the penalty of sin. But they had to conduct these sacrifices over and over again because they weren’t strong enough to remove sin’s power.

When Jesus Christ came to this earth from Heaven, His mission was to defeat the power of sin and set humans free from its destruction. He was fully God and fully human – and as such, He was uniquely able to separate humanity from the sin that enslaved them.

The Bible says that God “made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). In other words, Christ – the sinless, divine, Son of God – came to earth as a human and took on all of humanity’s sin. When he was put to the death on a Roman cross 2,000 years ago, He was suffering the fate of sin, which is death. However, because He was also perfectly righteous and divine, He was also stronger than sin and death and rose from the grave three days later.

Putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ means that you understand the consequences of sin that plagues your life, and you understand that Jesus Christ took your place to suffer those consequences and to overcome the power of sin and death. The Bible explains that Jesus Christ is the One who died for all, so that means that all died (2 Corinthians 5:14b). In other words, when we trust in Christ, we understand that we died also to sin through Him. In addition, when we trust in Christ, we also will live eternally through Him:

“If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with…Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (see Romans 6:5-11).

Will You Take This Gift of a Second Chance?

Jesus Christ offers the ultimate second chance. Where once we were receiving the natural consequence of sin – death, God provided the gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ (see Romans 6:23).

God showed His love for you by sending Jesus Christ, “that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

The Bible explains the way to receive this second-chance gift is simply by faith:
“If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved…for ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved’” (Romans 10:9-10, 13).