Rabbi Schneider - He Died in Our Place
Baruch Hashem, blessings to you, my beloved friends. Thank you for letting me minister to you today. We're looking at the Gospel of John, two foundational scriptures from John chapter one. Reading the Word of God, chapter one verse three says this: "All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him, nothing that came into being has come into being". So they're talking about the Son who's in the bosom of the Father, John chapter one, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. In Him was life. And that life was the light of men".
And then John says, everything that's been created came into creation, came into being through Him, through this invisible Word who's in the bosom of the Father, who is, in essence, God. And then John continues on in the 14 verse and says this Word through whom everything came into being through became flesh. And John says, And we beheld His glory, that God Himself clothed Himself in flesh and blood. He clothed himself in humanity. You see, there's a difference between saying God is a man because God is not a man. The Scripture says point blank, God is not a man, but rather God clothed Himself in humanity. Theologically, we call it the hypostatic union that God merged Himself with humanity, taking upon Himself human nature in order to fully experience life as you and I do, and then to die as the perfectly innocent human being in the place of the guilty to atone for our sins.
That's what separates your faith in Yeshua from every other supposed pathway to God in the world. There are so many people that call themselves Christians that just don't get this. They kind of equate their faith in Jesus as equivalent to other faiths in world religions. They feel like, well, I believe, you know, that basically anybody that worships God and is a good person is going to go to heaven. That is not the message that the scriptures bring us. The scriptures teaches us that there's no other way unto heaven by which men can be saved but the name of Jesus. Why? Because of who He is and because of what He's done. He is the creator that came into the universe, into the earth, clothed in human nature, the perfect human being, sinless, blameless. And then He died in our place as an atonement for our sin, shedding His blood, which is the representation that His life had been given.
So that when you and I put our faith in Him, we become justified and righteous because the righteous one, Yeshua, the Word, died in our place. And if you don't get that Jesus is the only way to heaven, then you really don't understand the message of the Gospel at all. Yeshua is the way, the truth, and the life and no one comes to the Father but through Him. There is no other means of atonement that God has made for us but to put our faith in the One that died in our place, who was Himself the Creator, clothed in humanity, shedding His blood for our sin.
There's no people that get to heaven because they're good. The only people that go to heaven are people that have received the gift of righteousness through the Word who was clothed in humanity and died in our place. If you've not gotten on your knees and recognized that, maybe you call yourself a Christian, but you never really got that, I want to encourage you right now. Get on your knees. Apologize to God for not understanding how precious of a gift He made Himself to you to be through the Lamb and say:
Father, forgive me. I'll never think the way that I thought before. I'll never think that Christianity is just one path to You, that Jesus is just one of many ways, that all good people go to heaven. Father, I understand now. I've heard what Rabbi said. I understand it. And Father, I repent. I will give my allegiance now to You alone and the message of the Gospel.