The Christian comes to a knowledge of God through a "leap of faith" in our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus, who was finite man and Eternal God at one place and at the same time, came to earth from heaven to sacrifice Himself in man's place to take away his sin which causes his eternal separation from God and to reconcile man to God forever. This truth is that which Kierkegaard called "the paradox." How could an Eternal God become a finite man? To the human mind, this makes no sense. Kierkegaard wrote, even though he was a believer, that this was absurd.
Yet, Jesus is the bridge between the finite and the eternal. The center beam of His cross goes up from earth toward heaven with Jesus suspended between. His arms were nailed to the crossbeam, stretched out to show His love for all humanity. His blood is available to all men, and washes away the sins of all who will repent and believe in Him. His resurrection gives eternal life and reconciliation to God to all who will believe. This salvation requires a "leap of faith" in this "paradox." God deliberately planned it this way because man can in no way come to God but God could come to man. Only the passion of the Christ suffering in agony on the cross, demonstrating the self-sacrifice of His awesome Love, could bridge that infinite gap between God and man. Only the Eternal could overcome the infinite.
The materialists and the atheists also have their "leap of faith" although they deny this and claim that finite man can find truth through reason and scientific investigation alone. But they actually believe that through chance alone; that is, by an extremely long series of lucky breaks, inert matter and energy could produce life, and intelligent life, by a process they call evolution. They believe this even though some of their own mathematicians have calculated that this process is absolutely impossible. These are the same people that ridicule Christians for our "leap of faith."
God's simple truth is that finite man has no hope of discovering ultimate truth through the severe limitations of his reason, investigations, religion, or goodness. For man even to try to do this reveals the height of his hubris. As the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis reveals, when man attempts to become his own god, he only succeeds in demonstrating the silliness of his pride. God hates the sin of pride the most because it keeps more men from being reconciled to Him than any other sin.
Every person who hears or reads the gospel should learn to humble themselves before God and simply admit that they are lost sinners with no hope of saving themselves, and make that true "leap of faith" to the cross of Christ where God has already provided all they need for their salvation.
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