A horrible misconception about the life of Christ-followers is that everything is about rules and regulations. So many people will never walk into a church building or engage in open dialogue about spiritual matters because they think that we will tell them to “clean up their act” or “get it together” so that they will be acceptable to God. There are two huge problems with this; first, nobody can make themselves clean enough to be acceptable to God; second, we actually are acting like we can!
Imagine that. The Bible we claim to believe states very clearly that all of our righteous behavior is meaningless (see Isaiah 64:6 and Romans 3:10), yet we try to tell the world to get righteous before they can meet God. No wonder people won't listen to us! The modern church is full of double talking Pharisees just as Israel was in the time of Jesus.
The sad truth is that we all are sinful humans who cannot come near to God without Him calling us. When sin entered the world through the disobedience of Adam, the relationship between man and God changed (see Genesis 3). Originally made in God's image, mankind is now a distorted image of Him. Left to our own devices, we will eventually succumb to our earthly nature which is at odds with God's divine nature (see Genesis 6 and Romans 8:7). What this means in practical terms is that a human is unable to be righteous in the eyes of God unless one of them has a change in nature. God does not change (see Malachi 3:6 and Hebrews 1:10-12), so we must.
No comments:
Post a Comment