The Greatest Problem the Universe Has Ever Known

"But above all—and here is the real crux of the problem—you cannot find God. You can improve your life, you can decide to be more moral, and you may feel a sense of satisfaction that you are doing very well, but that is not the problem. No; the problem is how to know God, how to have fellowship with Him, how to be blessed by Him, and to live in harmony with Him with the laws of your own being. And that means finding God. But how can you find God? AS the author of the book of Job put it so long ago, “Canst thou by searching find out God?” (11:7). Paul says, “The world by wisdom knew not God” (1Cor 1:21), and remember that “wisdom” there means the wisdom taught by the great Greek philosophers during the flowering of Greek philosophy.
Men and women can never find God. They have been trying throughout the centuries, but they cannot . That is the difficulty from the human side, and all our modern self-confidence is ridiculous at this point. Why not look at the chaos of the world and face the facts?

But look at the difficulty from God’s side, and here you see the truth that the apostles preached before everything else: “Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Savior, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins.” Why did God do this? The biblical message, and the only answer is that God sent the Savior because on He could save us. Man cannot produce a savior who is able to save, but God has done it.

But why is the modern teaching wrong—this teaching that God loves everybody, that everybody is automatically forgiven and nobody is going to be punished? It is wrong because it is a blank contradiction of the historical events concerning Jesus Christ, especially His death upon the cross. It is because of Christ’s death that there is all this great doctrine in the New Testament. It is because of His death that we have Communion and talk about broken body and shed blood.

The problem of forgiveness, of reconciling men and women to God, is the greatest problem the universe has ever known or ever will know. This, I say with reverence, is the greatest problem of all even to Almighty God, and none other but He could solve it"

Martyn Lloyd Jones, Victorious Christianity