Do you know Jesus? That may seem like a pretty simple question, but how you answer it is quite important.

Many people have heard of Jesus, that He was a man who lived a long time ago and who some say had some good moral teachings. 

Beyond that, there are many people who know of Jesus. They’ve heard a little more about Him than the first group and may even believe that He was a great prophet who had some radical ideas.

With all due respect, those who simply know some things about Jesus, don’t truly know Him, and they definitely don’t know Him as their Savior.

I may know of the President of the United States, but I certainly don’t know him on a personal level.

To know Jesus Christ as your Savior and have a daily, ongoing relationship with Him is the only true gateway to an intimate relationship with God the Father. 

As Jesus Himself said,

I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

John 14:6

Jesus also said,

I and the Father are one.

John 10:30

Simply put, there is but one true pathway to God, and that is through His Son, Jesus. If you don’t know Jesus, then you don’t know the Father.

Our sin is what separates us from God, creating a chasm between Him and us that goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden.

Adam and Eve were tempted by Satan into eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. 

That is the point at which sin entered the perfect world God had created.

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Rom. 3:23

Hundreds of years later, God made a covenant with the Israelites, giving them the Law, which they were supposed to adhere to.

However, the Law was simply the precursor to the work that Jesus did on the cross. The Law helped humankind to recognize their sin and the futile attempts at keeping all aspects of the law.

Being the just God that He is, and since man failed at keeping the Law, God the Father sent His Son Jesus to be the sacrifice for our sins once and for all.

He allowed Jesus to be flogged and cruelly murdered by crucifixion, one of the most excruciating forms of torture and death ever devised.

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Rom. 5:8

But that’s not all. After His death, Jesus lay in the tomb for three days. Then the Father resurrected Him, putting on a grand display of Christ’s power over death. 

With Jesus’s death and resurrection, we have the same hope of eternal life if we simply repent of our sins and let Jesus into our lives as our Savior. 

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Rom. 6:23

There is no other pathway to an eternity spent living in Heaven with God.

When you die, if you haven’t let Jesus into your life as your Savior, you’ll spend all of eternity separated from God in a horrendous lake of fire.

You may say, “Well, that just doesn’t make any sense. I’m a good person. God wouldn’t send me to some place like that.”

It’s not that God is sending you there; it’s that you’re making the choice to live in eternal separation from God.

Or you may simply not believe the Bible and all the truth contained in it.

For all the Christians who take the Bible literally, the worst thing that could happen is that they’re wrong, and we simply cease to exist after we die.

However, if the Bible is right and you’re wrong, you’re putting your entire eternity at stake. You risk ending up in a place that you will definitely wish you weren’t in.

However, it’s easy to change all that. If you’ve never accepted Christ as your Savior, there’s no better time to do it than right now.

Take a moment and pray to God. Tell Him you’re sorry for the sins you’ve committed and that you want to live a better life from this point forward. 

Thank Him for sending Jesus to die for your sins, washing you clean of them, and making you righteous in His eyes. 

Then ask Jesus to come into your heart as your Lord and Savior. Acknowledge that Jesus is God in human form and that he is the true pathway to salvation.

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.

Rom. 10:9-10

The next thing you need to do is find a Bible-believing church to begin attending.

Find the pastor and tell him you’ve recently accepted Christ into your life, and that you’d like to be baptized as an outward sign of your acceptance of Jesus as Lord of your life.

The steps to accepting Jesus and becoming a Christian are simple. But if you’ve been living in sin for a long time, they may seem like a huge commitment. 

Furthermore, it doesn’t mean that everything will be completely rosy after you accept Christ.

You’ll still have problems, but you’ll now have God in your corner helping you, as well as Jesus and the Holy Spirit interceding on your behalf with the Father (Rom. 8:26, 34).

Don’t put off making the biggest and best decision of your life. One day it will be too late.