Week 59 Bible Reading: Romans 3:21–28

God makes people right with himself through their faith in Jesus Christ.
- Romans 3:22 ICB

An American visiting Jamaica noticed that the people in that island nation love the game of cricket. So he asked a Jamaican teenager to explain it to him. They sat on the ground, and the teen used rocks and sand drawings to help explain it. Later, the man watched a cricket match on TV while a coach pointed out what was happening. Yet, after eleven days on the island, he still didn’t understand cricket.

To be fair, some Jamaicans might feel the same way about American football. One reason we may not like someone else’s favorite sport is that we don’t get it.

Could that be true of the way some of your friends think about Christianity—that it seems too complicated? Maybe to them, it seems to be about rules and a thick book with big words in it.

However, Christianity is quite simple: Each of us can be made right with a holy God through believing in Jesus—putting our faith in Jesus’s death and resurrection to save us. Our sins can be forgiven (see Romans 3:24, 28; 10:9–10). Do your friends not get why you have faith in Jesus? Keep it simple. Tell them Jesus loves them and died to save them from their sins. Maybe they can learn to love Jesus too.

Cricket was first introduced to Jamaica in 1895 when a team from England played a match on the island. Jamaica was a crown colony of Great Britain at the time, which meant it was not an independent nation as it is now.