God created everything. He created this earth and everything in it, including you and me. He created us in his image meaning we are smart, we are willful, we have emotions, and we have an internal compass that helps us intuitively know right from wrong even if we were never taught these things. God created us to be holy too, because He is holy. Holy means to be set apart, to be pure. We once were fully 100% holy and pure. But remember, God made us willful and smart in his image. Even though he created us, we somehow decided we knew better. We were deceived into thinking we could control our lives without God; that we were right, and his commands to us on how were were to live our lives were optional, so we did our own thing. We went left, when God clearly asked us to go right.
That one decision to live outside of God’s will (the rules he set for us) caused us to no longer be pure. We were now on our own. No longer able to be with God. We willfully separated ourselves from God in a selfish act of desiring to be our own master, our own god. Through this departure from God brought massive consequences of sin. No longer were were following the righteous will of God, but the sinful will of our own flesh. Sin became the outpouring of who we are. Sin, while often thought of as an act, is the essence of who we ARE. Sin is our state of being. Sin means we are no longer holy, we are separated from God, on our own, living for ourselves 100% of the time.
This sin state of being has horrendous ramifications. It manifests itself in different ways for different people. For some, sin shows in big ways that we all know and hate such as murder, rape, and grand theft. However, for the majority of us it manifests in small ways, such as white lies to get out of a parking ticket, stealing office supplies from our work, “borrowing” music and movies illegally on the Internet, cheating just a bit, or a lot on our taxes, making false insurance claims to get a better outcome, gossiping about a friend to make ourselves look better, all in an effort to live a life that seems to be free but is full of bondage. Sin is a lifestyle marked by self-serving behavior. Again, sis not an act, but it is who we are. It is the very fiber of our being.
If you were to vote for a new judge for the Supreme Court Justice, I would bet you would not vote for one who uses the slogan, “Vote for me, All go free!” That would defeat the purpose of a judge. We want the most impartial judge. Our souls still cry for justice when we, or a fellow human being are wronged. God is the ultimate Judge. He created you, He created me. Because He created us all, that means He has ultimate ownership, authorship, and He can do what he likes with us regardless of what we think because that is fair. When I create art, a meal, a child, I am in charge. I am the authority over that creation. I decide where it goes, what it does, and how it moves forward. I am in an authoritative position over anything I create (within moral reason with a child, but I hope you get where I am going here).
It is the same right of God. If you agree that God is the Creator of this world, including you and me, then we must agree that God has an authoritative right over all of His creation. Ultimately that is why sin is considered, by the vast majority, to be a bad thing. It must be punished. Sinful acts are an outpouring of our sin nature. Our desire to be in charge and our desire to do what we want rather than what God, our Creator has asked us to do, deserves punishment. We do not deserve a get-out-of-jail-free card simply because we are “pretty good”. He is holy, yet we are no longer holy. We cannot be in the presence of God without judgement. There needs to be a reconciliation in order for us to be right before God again. A created thing that goes rogue, deserves to be found and put down. We deserve death, which would be our jail sentence. That is what Hell is all about. Hell is our prison cell. We get a glimpse of what it is in the Bible, and believe me, you do not want to go there. Just a few descriptive words about it are enough to make your skin crawl: eternal damnation, weeping, gnashing of teeth, eternal fire, unquenchable thirst. This jail cell is where we are all headed for eternity because of our separation from God.
Here is where the reality of our state gets wildly interesting and almost too incredible for words. God is love. He is not just loving, He does not just love us, but he IS love. He is the very source of love. He knows we are weak. He knows we need Him. He knows our flesh is strong. He stepped in and did the one thing we could never do. He came down to live among us perfectly. He sent his only Son, Jesus, God in the flesh, to live a perfect life. Something none of us could ever do. He lived literally a perfect, sinless life. He was our proxy. Then, in an inconceivable act of mercy and grace, He died the very death each and every one of us deserve to die. He was guiltless. He lived the life we never could only to die the death each of us should. Death on a cross. A horrendously humiliating, excruciatingly painful and draw-out death. He reconciled my life, He reconciled your life to God through His death. He paid our penalty. He satisfied the Judge. He stepped in for us!
As if that were not enough, Jesus came back to life. He defeated death. He defied nature. He is a living proof of what we get to experience some day. It almost seems too good to be true! It seems like a great fairy tail. But it is real. The veracity of the Bible, the actual life, death, AND resurrection of the man Jesus has been documented and proven even by those outside of the Christian faith! So why are there millions upon millions of people who still don’t believe and may never give their live to Christ? Our sin nature is so deeply rooted and woven into the fiber of our souls that we want it not to be true. God still gives us a choice. He still gives us our will. Our will wants to satisfy ourself. Our soul cannot and will not bow to another. The throne room of our hearts already has someone firmly seated on it’s seat: ourself. There is hope, however!
God calls His children. One by one, His Holy Spirit convinces and convicts us of our sin, of our need for holiness and righteousness, and He presses on our heart the very heavy burden of our sin and need for judgement. The Holy Spirit works in us, quickening our heart to desire after God’s heart. He shows us the reality of our sin and the glory and splendor of what it means to be free of that burden. The simple yet profound act of placing our life in the hands of the Almighty God becomes a 180 degree shift from self to God. We must turn from our idol of self and turn to a life where Jesus is the only One able to sit on the throne of our heart. We must raise the white flag, admit that we were wrong, seek forgiveness from our sin, and admit that ownership is not ours, but our Creators. We must trust fully in Jesus. We must follow hard after Him knowing others will despise us. As a follower of Jesus, we now recognize the futility of living for our “self” and realize the beauty of a grace and mercy-filled life of living for God.
Friend, if you are on the wrong side of this, I implore you, by the mercy of God, to get reconciled to God. Place your trust and faith in Him alone. Turn away from your sin and yourself and turn to God. The peace and love and mercy and grace will wrap around your heart and give you courage and strength to follow hard after Him. There is no magic prayer. There is no “ticket to Heaven” only to go back to a self-serving life. If you have raised the white flag, read the Bible. That is how God speaks to us. Pray all the time, talk to God, ask for Him to forgive you of your sin. Ask Him to give you faith and wisdom to do His will. Share with others what you have found!
Holy. Just. Love. 