ApprehendingGrace.com

How good are you? Let’s draw a scale to represent “goodness.” We’ll put God at the top of the scale. Scripture says that He is perfect in all His ways and that His goodness knows no bounds. He is the pinnacle of goodness.

Now where would you put yourself on the scale? Well, before you try to figure that out, let’s pick an easier one. Where would you put Mother Theresa on the scale? I’m guessing pretty close to the top. How about Hitler or Jeffrey Dahmer, the serial killer and cannibal? Pretty close to the bottom I’d guess. Think of some other people you know and imagine where they would be on the scale. Now, where would you put yourself on the scale?

I’d put myself a little above the half way mark. I’m a little more good than bad, but I have a long way to go before I even approach God’s goodness. And that’s the point of the scale. Everyone on the scale, whether they are Mother Theresa, Hitler or you or me, experiences a gap between God’s perfect goodness and where they live.  That gap is what the Bible calls sin – the word actually means “missing the mark” of God’s standard.

Let’s look at a verse from the Bible:

“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.”
            Romans 6:23

This verse tells us a lot about that gap between us and God’s moral standard. Let’s look at some key words:

Wages — What we earn for something we do.
Sin — As I said above, it’s missing the mark of God’s standard. In this verse it’s what we’ve done to earn our wages.
Death — That’s what our wages are!

…in other words, we’ve earned death by sinning. Not a great wage, I’d say, but then it wasn’t a great work we did to earn it!

Gift — It’s something we receive for doing nothing – the exact opposite of wages!
God — The gift comes from God, it isn’t the result of our own actions.
Life — God’s gift is life, both now and throughout eternity. It is the exact opposite of death!

…in other words, the gift God offers to us is eternal life. It’s a pretty great gift that we cannot earn but we can surely accept.

Through Christ Jesus — Hmmm…God gives the gift, but it had to be paid for by someone. It’s a gift to us, so we don’t pay for it. This verse tells us that Jesus paid for it. We’ve already seen that the price, the wages, is death. So when Christ died on the cross, He was paying the price for our sins.

Our Lord — These two words explain how we receive God’s gift – by making Jesus Christ our Lord, by choosing to let Him be the leader of our lives.

The gap on our scale between where God is and where we are represents our sin.  Turn the scale on it’s side and you’ll see us on one side and God on the other. The gap between us and God represents our sin and the wages we’ve earned for that sin is our death. Praise God that He sent Christ, who willingly accepted those wages on our behalf! The free gift God offers to bridge the gap between us is the death of Christ. When we accept that gift by recognizing His leadership in our lives, we are reconciled to God – give life now and throughout eternity.

Are you reconciled to God? Or are you choosing to live your life your own way, earning the wages of death? Accepting God’s gift of eternal life is easy. It means agreeing with God – that you don’t meet His standards – that you have sinned and therefore earned death, and then choosing to accept His free gift of eternal life by following Jesus – by living your life and making your decisions based on His leadership.

It’s that easy…and that hard. Easy because all that’s required is talking to God conversationally and asking him to forgive you for choosing sin and telling Him that you want to choose life by following Jesus. Hard because it means choosing to let God be the Lord of your life. Fortunately, it’s a process. You won’t totally change overnight, but your thoughts and desires will begin to change and that change will increase exponentially you spend time with God by praying more and beginning to read the Bible. Try it! It means life…now and forever.

If you’ve made this decision for the first time, please e-mail me at sandy@ApprehendingGrace.com. I’ll help you get off to a good start in your new life with Christ.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 29th, 2008 at 4:45 pm and is filed under God's Love, Gospel Message, Jesus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.