Freedom From Your Misery
This may be shocking news to some, but all of us are born in the lost condition. There are no exceptions to the misery caused by sin except the person of Jesus Christ. He alone was specially conceived and did not inherit the unavoidable effects that came from Adam’s sin.
God is a just God
Aside from God’s redeeming grace, no one can be in relationship with Father God. He built the principle of justice into His creation. It is inherent to His nature. The principle says that you and I forever deserve isolation from Him due to our sin. As humans, we are offensive to Him at our conception. Without accepting Jesus as Savior, who paid your sin debt, you are rightly condemned to God’s just misery, wrath, and punishment. The remedy is found in the promise and work of God. Jesus paid the debt of sin for all people at the cross.
“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.”
ROMANS 6:23 NLT
We all take justice and moral responsibility lightly. Our society has declined to where there is no absolute standard for justice. Everything has become relative to what benefits the individual or the community. We live only by what seems to benefit our needs and whims at the moment.
Justice is confused in our fallen culture
People see justice as a way to correct bad behavior so that the criminal is duly punished and changed. And there’s an assumption that fines, jails, and prisons will accomplish this. God’s justice is not primarily to rehabilitate. That is just a side benefit of justice. Justice is not simply to teach us a lesson. It is to pay a debt to the offended. God’s justice is both restitution to the victim for the damage done, and punishment to the one who committed the crime.
Justice is not satisfied by trying to motivate law breakers and criminals to do better the next time. Rather, it demands specific penalties for violating absolute moral principles. Part of God’s justice is the misery sin deserves and brings into the human race – both collectively and individually. It is deserved because offending a holy God is the greatest crime in the universe. One of the evidences of the corruption of sin in the human soul is the common attitude about this matter of what is “just”.
God’s views are different than ours
If you asked most people what crimes are the greatest, they would list things like; murder, terrorism, sexual assault, and armed robberies. As horrible as those things are, God”s view is that the greatest crime is to offend Him. It might be only in our thoughts or attitudes, but it goes against all we were created and are commanded to be. We often think that failing to take worship seriously, or not trusting the Bible, or not seeking to live a moral life are minor offenses that do not matter much. God says that things like these matter the most.
Because of the fall into sin, we live in a world plagued by misery. The price we owe for our sins against God is so great, that we finite creatures can never fully pay it. We do not have the means for repairing such infinitely significant offenses. All the sufferings for all eternity still never remove the guilt or satisfy the debt we owe.
God offers us THE remedy
God did not leave lost mankind forever to suffer the miserable consequences of sin. Though we deserve misery both now and forever, He paid for that misery in our place. All who place their faith and trust in that promose are credited with Christ’s own righteousness. This is a blessing undeserved, but freely given by God’s grace alone. Remember, “… the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
The facts of Scripture are plain for those who take them for what they say. Unfortunately, this is much different than what is preached or taught at many authors, churches, and religious organizations today.
We each must make a choice
The remedy is not found by avoiding the results of our inherited sin. You cannot ensure that nothing bad will happen to you, that no natural disaster will happen, that you’ll never get sick, that you’ll never be taken advantage of, that your relationships won’t hurt you, or that you will be able to avoid death. These things happen as the just results of Adam’s and your own sins.
The remedy is found in the promise and work of the eternal God. Jesus life, death, and resurrection are the remedy for those who chose to place their faith and trust in Him.
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