Has Christ Stirred Your Heart to Seek Forgivenes?

© 2018by Tom Boynton (editing by Kathy Boynton)

We each have eternity ahead of us.  Most of us will probably experience bodily death before passing into our irreversible eternal assignments.  Many I’ve met focus their thinking primarily on how to provide for life in this body.  They believe that, after death, all reasonably good people will go to Heaven.  Doesn’t God reserve eternal torment only for a few especially wicked people more unrighteous than ourselves?

Herein is the problem!  We’re all fallen descendents of Adam and Eve. God declares that we are all wicked.  We have all come short of His glorious standard of righteousness.

”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)

“For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;” (Romans 3:23)

To make matters worse, even the good works we’re proud of are disgusting to God.

“But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” (Isaiah 64:6)

None of us is capable of paying the penalty for breaching God’s infinitely holy standard.  Only God the Son, Jesus Christ, could pay that penalty by His willing, sacrificial death on the cross.  Only those who repentantly recognize their wickedness and ask for Christ’s forgiveness will be forgiven.  Jesus said,

“I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” (Luke 5:32)

If God never causes you to see yourself as a wicked sinner, your hope for eternity is dark indeed.  Church membership won’t help you.  Acts of kindness won’t help you.  As long as you are doing these things to earn God’s favor, they earn only His disgust.  Good works done to earn salvation are only puny acts of bribery in His sight.  When God causes you to seek His undeserved forgiveness, He will give you a heart truly thankful for that forgiveness.  Only then will the thankful acts of goodness, proceeding from your heart, be pleasing to God.

Have you asked Him to cleanse you, by His blood, from your wickedness?

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