- Humans are the only animals in the world who worship. The centrality of human religious thinking points to an unmistakable reality: that humans instinctively know, or at least suspect, that there exists One to whom they are accountable for their behavior. They also assume, or know, that they have fallen short of what that higher being requires of them.
- It cannot be misunderstood: there is good in people, actually a great deal of good. Humans are not as bad as they could be. The point is simply this: if our premise is that to get to heaven one has to be good, then how good is good enough? God is not demanding goodness, He is demanding perfection!
- A wise old Baptist preacher once said, "It isn't difficult to get people saved; it is difficult to get them lost!" This is man's dilemma: like the Pharisees, people cling to the old fig leaves of self-effort instead of submitting to the covering God Himself has provided for all (Christ's sacrificial death, the Cross). Each of us must choose one or the other
- We have discovered that the salvation offered by Christianity is uniquely opposed to all human efforts to secure it by working one's way into God's good graces. In fact, if God expected us to attain our salvation through good deeds, then God made a terrible mistake. He allowed His only-begotten Son to come to earth-robed in human flesh- and die a horrible death on a cross for our personal, eternal benefit. To choose a "good works" path to God is to negate the total significance of Christ's death, making it meaningless and unnessecary.
I forget some of these basic facts about humanity and Christianity. God has a plan and nothing was done by accident. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23) but that is why the sacrifice of Christ is so amazing. That God could love a being who has failed so much, but still wants to redeem amazes me!
Until next time...
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