"...For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished..."
-Romans 3 v 23-25
We all sin. If you've been reading this blog long enough, you've probably gathered that from the numerous times I've said it. I admit that it does get repetitive, but it is a very real threat. Frankly, I don't think its mentioned enough. I mean, in Christian circles, we tend to focus on the good side of things, but when it comes to the bad things such as sin, Satan, hell and Judgement Day, we're very quick to bolt for the door, as if there's some sort of taboo on these very real subjects.
In order to explain where this blog is going, we have to look at a key part of God's character. His holiness. We briefly mentioned it in the last post, but to a great degree. What is holiness? What does it mean to be holy?
There are quite a few meanings of the word holy but in this context the dictionary states that it is to have a "having a spiritually pure quality." This is a pretty good definition, but as regards the character of God, it really only scratches the surface;
"This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all..."
-1 John 1 v 5
To put it in simple terms, to be holy is to be without sin. That's something big, something out of this world. God is without sin, which makes Him holy. But the side that I want to look at is something which comes out of this attribute. Because God is holy, He is without sin. But one thing about God is that He can't be anywhere where there is sin, for to do so would compromise His holiness. And because of this, He can't let everyone into heaven, because not only would He be giving credit to Satan, where there is no credit due, but it would compromise His home, His heaven. Heaven would no longer be the place that we all seek, it would rather be just another Earth, full of sin.
Why did we have to go through all of that? Well it leads onto another attribute to God, which we also touched on last time. God is just. And because He can't let any sin into Heaven, all of us must stand in front of Him, and give an account of our lives. All of us will be judged on the Day of Days, and those who don't cut it, well, they're in for an eternity of suffering and pain. That's the only way that we can repay for our sins is to suffer in Hell because of them... Or is it?
See, last week, we talked about righteousness, and in honesty, this is really a follow on blog from that. There are really two things that can happen come the Day of Judgement;
1) We can be thrown into Hell for eternity to pay for what we have done.
or
2) Through accepting Jesus' work on the Cross, we can be forgiven and called righteous by the living God.
How? Just a player comes on as a substitute in a soccer match, so Jesus became our substitute for God's wrath. Every sin that we had every committed, are committing, or will commit was place on Him, while the Father turned His back, and poured out his wrath on Him who became sin, who knew no sin.
How does this work? How does the great exchange actually happen? To be honest, I don't know, and I doubt I will ever know until I reach my guaranteed home in Heaven, when I can ask God for myself. But there's an important point here; truth is not limited by comprehension. God does things in our lives that go beyond belief. I know for a fact that the fact that God loves a pure sinner is baffling to me, it makes no logical sense. But I still believe, because I put my faith in the character of God. Sometimes God achieves things that we don't understand, but we believe God is good, and so we trust Him.
I think we all know which would be better. But as in last week, it is only through Jesus, not anything that we can do, that can make us righteous. It is by faith in Him alone that will ultimately decide your fate;
"...so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life..."
-Titus 3 v 7
"Again, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man's sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ..."
-Romans 5 v 16-17
How can we be justified?
Simple...
Let Him be the Nexus of your life...
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