The picture shows one company’s attempt to get us, its customers, to read the ‘small print’, the ‘terms and conditions’ associated with its sales to us. Nonetheless, I suspect that most of us continue to give only brief attention to such things. We just tick the box on the purchase screen or click on ‘Accept’ and pay up. Life is just too busy to read through the seemingly endless pages of blurb.
I wonder whether we treat the Bible and its message in exactly the same way? It is possible to be a nominal Christian, to put a tick in a box and occasionally attend a place of worship and yet never read Christianity’s most important document – God’s word to us, the Bible.
However, when the item we have bought turns out to be faulty, or not the right size, we are suddenly concerned about our rights as a customer and what it might say in that document that we had completely ignored. Some people treat God and the Bible in the same way – we will think about Christianity when things go wrong, or when we are close to death. The Bible gives a stark warning as to the dangers of such a course of action, ‘How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?’[1]
The message of the Bible is of a loving God who sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to die upon a Roman cross, outside of Jerusalem some 2000 years ago. It tells us that ‘The Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world’.[2] To deliver us from the penalty of our sin and failure, God provided a Saviour, One who ‘is able to save . . . to the uttermost [all] that come unto God by him’.[3] But, like the purchases we make, there are ‘terms and conditions’ to this salvation that God has provided. First, we need to ‘repent’, or accept God’s verdict on our life and turn our back upon the way we used to live – for ourselves. Second, we need to confess our failure to God – be honest and open with Him in prayer. Third, we need to ask Jesus Christ to be our Saviour and make Him Lord, or controller, of our life from this point onwards.
As the message in the picture says, this is important! Don’t neglect it!