From “How to become a Christian”: Chapter 9 – God’s dilemma and the plan He made to solve it
It is clear from the chapters above that there is a major problem. Our sin separates us from God and makes it necessary for Him to judge us and punish us. But that creates a dilemma for God because He doesn’t want to condemn us. He actually wants to be able to forgive us and accept us into His Kingdom, because He is loving and gracious. Yet His holiness means that He must condemn us, otherwise He would not be true to Himself.
Therefore God had to find a way to be able to forgive us without being untrue to Himself or compromising over sin. The only way that it could be done was for God to take the punishment upon Himself, because somebody had to pay the penalty for our sin. Yet, it had to be paid for by a human being, because the sins were committed by human beings.
That made it necessary for God to become a man so that He could live among us and be one of us. That was necessary to qualify Him to die for us and take the penalty for our sin. So, the dilemma was solved by the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, agreeing to become a human being so as to be our Saviour.
But it wasn’t just a simple matter. It required God to take a long series of preparatory steps before that Saviour could come. God had to establish a nation into which the Son of God could be born as a hunman being. Therefore, God had to establish the nation of Israel and the Law of Moses and He also had to send a succession of prophets who would prepare the Jewish people for the coming of the Saviour. In this chapter we shall look at these preparatory steps in more detail.
