Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
If I were to ask you, “how would you explain the central message of Christianity?” how would you respond?
The gospel, put simply – Jesus living the perfect life and dying for our sins, so that we can have eternal life with God – isn’t something we learn once and then move on from. (I know, too often I’ve thought this.)
Frequently, people seem to gloss over the part that we, as humans are sinful. Our culture says people are generally good but sometimes do bad things, which is inconsistent with what God says. This type of thinking is dangerous, because if we fail to see the constant brokenness in ourselves, we have an incomplete view of what Jesus did for us.
Romans 5:6-10 says this:
“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!”
In these verses, we hear things we might not want to – that we’re powerless, weak, unrighteous, ungodly, deserving of wrath and God’s enemies.
God loves us and created us to know him (John 17:3). However, we all have fallen short of God’s glorious standard (Romans 3:23). All sin – active rebellion or passive indifference toward God – is enough to separate us from him. God doesn’t need us to be society’s definition of good, he needs us to be blameless. Any white lie, judgmental thought or act of selfishness is enough to mess that up.
A pastor I listen to puts it this way. Sin is not what makes us unclean, we are unclean so we sin. The problem is within us. That’s why it’s impossible for us to fix it.
We’re all bound for eternal separation from God because he is a just judge. It’s what we deserve, according to God’s standards.
I don’t say this with the intent of scaring people into following Jesus. However, if we miss this point, we fail to understand just how much we need Jesus.
God’s response to our sinfulness is incredible. Jesus lived the perfect life and died on the cross, taking the full punishment of our sins– the solution to the problem of the sinful heart.
Knowing this frees us from thinking the gospel doesn’t apply to us (either because we’re too broken or because we don’t need it). It also frees us from thinking we can earn the favor of God by doing good.
God will continue to teach us the gospel in different ways, but having an accurate idea of our incurable sinful condition helps us understand the weight and significance of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.
