How old are you? Thirteen? Fifteen? Seventeen? Perhaps nineteen? You are maturing! This means you are thinking and questioning. You are not necessarily accepting all you are taught, but are thinking things out for yourself.
Among the questions which are native to all young people, have you ever asked yourself the question lying at the root of all the others? Why am I alive?
You know that someone made you. Common sense tells you that it is absurd to suppose that you evolved out of nothing. The sun, the stars and the whole of nature around you, even your own capacity to think, tell you that there is a God and that He gave you life, and that you will one day answer to Him for how that life was lived.
Yes, God gave you life. Yet this gives no clue to the problem of why He did it. You are still without the answer to your burning question, “Why am I alive?”
This is a question which our minds cannot think out. There is, in fact, only one way to learn the answer. That is for God Himself to tell you. This is just what He has done. The Bible, God’s message to us says, “For Thy pleasure they are and were created” (Rev 4:11).
None of us is able to live up to this great purpose. Having parents who were sinners (and this goes all the way back to Adam), we inherited a sinful nature, loving self rather than God. God is holy and cannot allow sin in any form. The Bible says, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). All sin, “little” sins and “big” sins, the first sin of Adam and the sin you commit today, amounts to a claim to live for your own pleasure. The Bible reveals, “All the world … is guilty before God.”
God wants you to be in His presence for all eternity, and to be blessed, happy and able to enjoy Him. In order not to be robbed of His desire to bless you, He has provided His own remedy for your need. He gave His only begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, Who came into the world to save sinners. He became man in order to shed His blood and die upon the cross to meet the holy claims of God against you a sinner.
As a result, God now offers to forgive your sins and bless you with the gift of eternal life (John 3:16). All that God requires is that you repent, agree with Him and trust His Son for your salvation from sin’s penalty and power. Christ upon the cross of Calvary took the guilty sinner’s place and suffered under the hand of God in the darkness of that awful day. He was bearing the judgment and death due to sinners. “Christ died for the ungodly” (Rom 5:6). God was totally satisfied with the payment Jesus made on our behalf at Calvary. He raised Him out from death on the third day and received Him up into heaven (Heb 10:12).
Through faith alone in the Lord Jesus you can have Biblical assurance that you have peace with God and that the question of your sins will never be brought up against you by God (Rom 5:1).
