In Psalms 14:2, 3 David says, “The Lord looked down from Heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any who understood, dealt wisely and sought after God, inquiring for and of Him and requiring him of vital necessity. They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy; there is none that does good or right, no, not one.” (Amplified)
Wow, what an indictment. To think that from God’s perspective, there is no one who has hit the target. All have missed the mark. Every man, woman, boy and girl are on the same equal playing field of accountability before God in the sins and trespasses. We’re all guilty. This verse was later to be reiterated by Paul in his letter to the Romans 3:11, 12. No matter how good we’ve been, what admirable deeds we’ve done, or how esteemed we have become in the eyes of friends, family, Church or social circles; we are all guilty of transgressing God’s perfect law. It doesn’t matter what sin we’ve committed. To break one of God’s laws is to be guilty of having broken them all. That makes us worthy of His condemnation in judgment, which is hard for us to grasp.
I have heard people say, "I may not be perfect, but at least I haven't murdered anybody!" We want to be judged by our self-perceptions and intentions, not by our sins, and we like to define sin into categories of major and minor, acceptable and unacceptable. All the while seeing ourselves as acceptable. There are no such categories. Sin is sin, and the death that results has been the captor of us all. We must consider the greatness of the love of God in Christ who looked upon our miserable state and purposed to love us in spite of ourselves. His goodness reached into the darkness of our spiritual existence and claimed us for His own possession and prize. How great is His love. How high and how wide. How deep and how strong. For this reason alone, we should be a people who cannot wait to give great praise for His excellent greatness.
Still, we insist that God judge by our standards...
We continue to fight and insist that we be accepted on our merit and not by His good mercy.
We make this relationship so difficult while He made it all so easy.
Think about it.
Drink deeply.
JP
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
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as soon as we accept we are sinners and we can never live up to a standard that God has put forth the easier our life will be. He knows we are sinners and he loves us. he just wants us to admit it, admit it to him so we can sluff off our own self righteousness and lay it all at his feet.
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