If somebody offered to take your worn out boots and give you his brand new Dodge quad-cab diesel would you take him up on it? Most of us would probably think he was nuts and tell him to go play his tricks on somebody else. There’s a saying that if something sounds too good to be true it probably is.

The gospel of Christ seems too good to be true, too. Take my sin and give me His righteousness? A man whom I did not know came up to me once and gave me a small booklet with five Bible texts in it. Most of us would be too embarrassed to do that. But he wasn’t ashamed to share the gospel. One of the texts said that any person who has the Son has life and He who has not the Son of God does not have life. My first thought was it can’t be that easy. I had grown up in a religious home but somehow the simplicity of the gospel hadn’t taken root.

So what did Jesus accomplish on that crucifixion weekend? He took our sins and paid for them with His own blood. There is no such thing as a free thing. A gift may be free to us but somebody pays for it. It ought to cause us to think twice before we willfully sin.

And then on Sunday morning Jesus came out of the grave. In victory He now stands in our place as our defense lawyer before God who, by the way, wants to save us, too. And Jesus says my blood, by blood. And the death of the innocent Son of God is accepted in place of sinful men and women who put their faith in Jesus and repent of their sin. And what do they get? Eternal life. That’s even better than trading a pair of boots for a new truck.

Rod Bieber is pastor for the John Day Seventh-Day Adventist Church.