I don’t deserve God’s favor. There is nothing that I have done in my life that rates so high that God would look at me and say, you deserve to live with me forever.
Even though I am a sinner, God still loved me. In all my mess of life, in all the horrible things that I have done and thought about doing, God still loved me.
He loved me enough to sacrifice his son for me. The only way I could come before God, in all of his glory, was to be cleaned. I couldn’t do it by myself.
Living a “good life” and being kind to others isn’t enough. We all know what goes through our minds. We all know how often we give in to temptation. It doesn’t matter if the temptation is small or large, we still know when we have done something that isn’t acceptable.
Society has come up with a new way of defining acceptable. Apparently, whatever you think is good, is good for you. It doesn’t seem to matter if that “good” is harmful to others, you have to think and fend for yourself.
This is a way of covering up sin. That is all that it is. It is making excuses and allowing people to think that they are not doing something that is evil to God.
Of course, those individuals either deny that God exists or allow each person to define God as they wish to do so. That way, no one is accountable to a set of pre-ordained rules, they are the ruler makers themselves.
If they want to do something that is against their own rules, well, they can just redefine their rules and go on their way. If you don’t see a problem with this, then look again.
This is the slope of sin. It can start out small and then snowball into horrific and evil deeds. That is why we are seeing so many awful things on the news. So many people are hurting and killing one another without remorse.
They used to call these people sociopaths but now it is more widespread. Evil is out in the open and is acceptable to most. After all, what you call evil, I can call good.
The sad thing is that the one true set of rules is reviled. God gave us ten commandments. There is nothing about these rules that people should object to. They are rules that make sense and provide safety and love for one another.
Of course, we none of us can keep those rules. We are sinners. Give us a set of rules and we will look for ways to break them and then, to justify what we did.
That is why we are in the position with God that we are in. He can’t have a relationship with us because he is good and we are evil. He is clean and righteous. We are filthy and loathsome.
He had to give us a way to be cleaned. He sent his only son to live among us. Jesus lived with the same temptations and withstood them. Then, although he was the only individual to live without sin, he willingly gave up his life so that his sinless blood could cover our sins and wash away our filth.
He then rose from the grave to defeat sin and death. He gave us a promise. If we believed in him and gave our lives to him and lived to his purpose, our sins would be covered and forgiven. If we did this, we would live in heaven with God forever.
The only thing I had to do was to accept him. Then, to turn from my sins and live life as he had shown us. While I don’t have to do good works to earn salvation, I have found that I have a desire to do good and not evil. I fail often, but Jesus picks me back up and puts me back on his path and forgives me.
This is the God that I serve. He doesn’t require sacrifices, he gave the greatest sacrifice imaginable. He wants us to love one another and live in harmony.
This is the beauty and the promise of heaven. Those who accept Jesus will eventually live in the most wonderful place. If you want to live there, too, the same promise is there for you. Just turn to Jesus, accept him as your God and savior and, with his help, turn your life around and live for him.
Romans 5:12
Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned.