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I'm Good... I'm OK...
Oh, really?
Countless numbers of people have
made the above comment, when offered a gospel tract by a street evangelist who
was trying to warn them of something they were quite oblivious to regarding
their spiritual condition in the eyes of God.
The fact of the matter is, no one is
good and no one is OK when it comes to their spiritual condition and their
fitness for a place as pure and sinless as Heaven. The Holy Bible makes
this fact quite clear over and over again. Here is just one of many
examples:
"As it is written, There is none
righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that
seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become
unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one." [Romans 3:10-12]
Do you think God would leave His
throne in Heaven and come to earth in the Person of Jesus Christ, to be brutally
beaten and killed for no reason? ... for people who are OK ... who don't
need a Savior ... who can get to Heaven on their own merits?
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It is precisely because there is
NONE good, NONE righteous, that the Lamb of God had to be slaughtered, because
no other payment was acceptable to God for the terrible assault on Him and His
laws that we commit every day. Don't even hope for one minute that your
good deeds will outweigh the bad. The seriousness of the sin and the
enormity of the penalty has more to do with the whom it is that has been
offended than who the offender is. The infinitely holy God of the universe
could care less about your unbelievably low standards of righteousness. It
is His standard that we must measure up to. It is He whom we need to be prepared
to meet and fellowship with someday.
There is no way in the world that we are fit to
dwell with this Holy Being the way we were born. Which is precisely why
the Bible declares that we must be BORN AGAIN. God has to perform a
supernatural transformation in us. He has to remake us. He has to
take people who could care less about eternity, who only care bout the here and
now, and turn them into fanatics who are preoccupied with heaven and the God who
dwells there. And if such a transformation does not occur, we are only fit
for eternal separation from God and from all that is good and holy, and that
only leaves one option, which is to be cast into eternal darkness as the Bible
calls it, a place called Hell. Like it or not and believe it or not, you are
entirely at God's mercy. He owes you nothing and you owe Him everything.
You have an appointment with Him that cannot be postponed nor avoided. You
WILL meet Him. Will you be ready?
Does this kind of talk make you
uncomfortable? I hope so. No one ever sought the Savior who was
comfortable with his spiritually lost condition. Does it scare you?
I hope so. No one ever sought the Savior who was not fearful of the wrath
of God and painfully aware that they deserved to be punished for a lifetime of
selfishness and rebellion
against the God of all creation.
"It is a fearful thing to
fall into the hands of the living God."
[Hebrews 10:31]
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