UNRIGHTEOUS DECISIONS

As we invite Jesus into our lives, He doesn’t leave us the same. The reason why is because we’re sinners; we have a propensity for making unrighteous decisions, and that vice needs correction. Jesus never made one bad decision in His entire life. When He was crucified for speaking the truth of His very nature, He took upon Himself the punishment for our propensity to choose anything but Him in this world. He took our consequence for being disobedient, for being selfish, for choosing worldly ways over His ways (Isaiah 53:5). And when He could have called angels to save Him from the cross, He chose instead to surrender (Matthew 26:53-54). As a result, He cannot leave us the same once we accept Him as our Savior. He loves us too much to leave us in our own ruins.

HANDING OVER OUR LIVES

When we accept Him as our Savior, we aren’t merely shaking hands; we’re handing over our life to Him. Why would we want Him to be our Messiah if we didn’t want Him to change anything about us? Why would the message of salvation appeal to us if we don’t even see anything wrong about the way we live?

On a daily basis, we are confronted by a reality that continually drives into our minds that we really have more questions than answers about existence, without the wisdom of God. We really don’t know what we’re doing and we need someone who knows what they’re doing to show us the way. And the truth is, we do have that. God created everything, including us, and He did it purposefully (Proverbs 16:4). He knows the way, because He is the way; the only way (John 14:6).

OUR ETERNAL SUBSTITUTE

As we compare our poor understanding of life to the fact that God knows everything, we can see more clearly how off-center we really are (1 John 3:20). We choose wrong very easily, and sometimes very blindly. But God knew we would find ourselves in this rebellious entanglement, which is why He planned on sending Jesus all along, even before all of creation even existed (1 Peter 1:20).

Jesus has to come into our lives and change what is keeping us off-center (in sin). The only reason we would want to remain off-center is because sin is more appealing to our flesh than the Good News is to our spirit; we’re lost in our sin until we receive hearts of flesh, where God’s grace helps us to understand our ultimate need for God’s intervention through Jesus.

LIVING IN SPIRITUAL BLINDNESS

There’s just no way around it: we need God, and God sent Jesus so that we could have God. Why are so many saying no to a relationship with Jesus? Sometimes, it’s because of the way a believer evangelizes, but other times it’s simply that an unbeliever doesn’t want to believe in something that will cause the need to change the way they’re already living. They’d rather live in spiritual blindness, misunderstanding that God is a loving and righteous Judge who commands that we love Him first and foremost (which keeps us “centered”), then our neighbor, and requires that we accept His Son as Lord over all (so our corruptible flesh doesn’t remain deceived by the temptation of sin) (Romans 6:23).

LOST WITHOUT KNOWING WHERE WE NEED TO BE

Many have a problem believing there is a righteous God who created objective morality, a type of morality which doesn’t change, which means it doesn’t excuse sin or justify the evolution of subjective morality, in which culture-to-culture and society-to society-chooses dictates their own moral compass. But the Biblical God created objectively morality and is the author of love; therefore, the person who seeks the Truth would come to understand the real reason sin exists is because God loved us so much that He gave us free will to allow us to choose evil instead of Him. However, we used our free will against Him, starting with the first humans. In the end, many come to understand we need God to even understand our very need for Him, lest we remain lost without even knowing where we need to go.

SIN REQUIRES JUSTICE BY A HOLY GOD

When we don’t accept Jesus, we’re denying that we have sin in our lives; sins still unpaid for that require justice, and the only justice that is acceptable is eternal damnation due to the Judge being a divine, holy, and perfect Being. He gives us everything we need, He loves us unconditionally and sent His Son to die for us in our place, and then accepts our receiving of this gift of salvation through faith as a substitute for eternal separation from Him. But many of us say no to that, and we even deny that there is sin in our lives to begin with, believing only in trying to be good people despite misunderstanding that we cannot define what good even is without the existence of the very God in dispute.

THE WORLD WILL KNOW WE ARE HIS DISCIPLES BY OUR LOVE

If you’re reading this, and maybe it’s the first time you’re considering Jesus as your Lord, please consider that the life Jesus calls us to live is one where we are commanded to love, more than anything. Jesus wants us to love so deeply and so unconditionally that our love is the one aspect of our character that people notice most. Jesus told His disciples that the world would know we are His disciples by our love (John 13:35).

The world is meant to be able to recognize that there’s something radically different about us as Christians compared to anyone else, and it’s the fact that we have a hope and a joy in knowing the Lord has come for us and saved us from God’s wrath for our sin, providing not only grace and mercy, but a way back to God Himself.

OUR PRIMARY EXAMPLE OF GODLY LOVE

This joy enables us to love people in the same way God loved us first: without condition or limit. We are called to forgive others and to do good to those who hate us (Luke 6:27). To love our enemies (Matthew 5:43-45). Those are difficult commands, and yet Jesus commands that we do it because He died for us while we were still in our sin (Romans 5:8). He didn’t wait for us to get ourselves in better spiritual condition (which we could never do), He came and took our punishment while we were in the midst of our sin. Meaning, His command for us to love isn’t so off-kilter; He loves us exactly the way He’s commanding us to love, and He did it by example so we’d understand how to practice it ourselves.

CREATED WITH A GOD-GIVEN PURPOSE

Jesus even sent the Holy Spirit so we could do great and mighty works in His physical absence (John 14:12). There is a lot of responsibility with being a follower of Christ, but it is the most purposeful lifestyle known to man because the purpose itself comes from the God of all creation. If God, who created everything, created us with a purpose, we can be sure that any other purpose we could create for ourselves in this life would pale in comparison to the transcendent creativity of our Lord, who works all things for the good of those who love Him (Romans 8:28).

BELIEVING IN JESUS FROM THE HEART

A Christian is a not merely a Christian when we say, “I accept Jesus as Lord over my life,” but when we mean it in our heart (Romans 10:9-11). Paul didn’t stop at, “If you just confess with your mouth,” rather he included, “and believe in your heart,” for a reason (italics are mine). To say the words but not to mean them is to betray ourselves. There’s no benefit in making a promise we plan not to keep. Our promise is to surrender ourselves to God and seek Jesus in all aspects of our lives. If we’re not really interested in putting in that kind of daily effort and really embracing what it means to be humble, compassionate, forgiving, loving, and yet bold and innocent, then our quest for a God-given lifestyle is futile.

DEEPLY ROOTED IN FAITH

If we confess with our mouthes but don’t believe in our hearts, we’ll be a seed that falls upon the rocks whose faith is undermined by worldly adversity (Matthew 13:20-21). We need to be rooted deeply in the Holy Spirit, constantly feeding our spirituality and nourishing our relationship with the Lord in order to stay strong in a world arduously attacked by the powers and principalities of darkness (demons in the spiritual realm that we can’t see, but which are invisibly interacting with our world in every moment) (Ephesians 6:12).

THE DIFFERENCE THE CHURCH CAN MAKE

As we continue to enter into deeper waters of a world getting colder and more spiritually corrupt, we need to be strong as the church. Our love must be louder than the hate circling the nation and the world. Our faith needs to be stronger than the doubt of every person, family, and society that is not God-fearing, that has no spiritual security (Ephesians 6:10-18), and is without hope of eternal life in Christ. If a blind world can come to see God’s love through His grace shining through His children (believers), then a difference can be made throughout the world. More people than ever can be saved, more love can be shared; more forgiveness extended, more grace received and more relationships formed with the God of heaven through Jesus Christ.

SHARING THE GOOD NEWS

The time we have left on this Earth is running out quickly. Every day needs to be seen as its last day for each of us, that we would choose to be more intentional in everything we do, in all we say, and in how we think and act. We need not take for granted that we have the chance to change someone’s life, to show someone that God exists, that His love is real, that His Son Jesus did rise again and gave us the hope we now have in our future. That is the Good News! It’s meant to be shared with everyone, that those who are called would answer that call and come to God through Christ.

REBORN AND TRANSFORMED

We are but a vapor in this life, but in the life to come, we will exist for all eternity. This is the one life we have to choose Jesus, to say no to satan and his lies, and to seek God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength (Luke 10:27). We will never get another chance after our last breath here. The choice is absolutely critical, and it’s the choice to be forgiven from God through Christ, to receive God’s love, to be transformed, and to be reborn. There’s no greater love than God’s love for His children. Everyone who receives Christ as Lord is God’s child.

I hope that is your choice today. I pray it would be so in Jesus’s mighty and precious name. Amen!

Photo by Henrique Ferreira on Unsplash