Responding
to God's Love
John 3:16
"For God so loved the world, that he
gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have
eternal life.God has to be true to Himself. People
are foolish to entertain the hope that He will ignore justice and sacrifice
holiness in order to allow unbelievers into heaven. Living a mostly moral life
will not satisfy a righteous Judge.
As much as the Lord loves us and desires to
save us from our sins, He cannot deny His holiness by accepting sin in His
presence. The Father is pristine perfection--a holy Being who, by His very
nature, must condemn all sin. Therefore, it is the height of egotism to think
that God will bend both His law and His nature to welcome one whom still bears
the stain of wrongdoing.
There is not one person who's good enough to
enter heaven on his or her own merit. Every one of us needs Jesus. The stain of
sin is washed clean only by the sacrifice of God's holy and blameless Son.
Those who believe in Christ are forgiven their wrongs and cloaked in His
righteousness (2 Cor. 5:21).
Let me make it very clear that trusting
Jesus is far more than giving intellectual assent to His existence--that's
something even the Devil acknowledges. A true believer enters into a relationship
with the One who loves his soul enough to save him from eternal punishment.
Those who remain tightly wrapped in their
mantle of sin cannot hope to sneak into heaven. God's holy nature demands
perfection, and since we can't provide this for ourselves, the Lord has given
it to all who believe in Him. He has exchanged our filthy rags for a cloak of
righteousness (Zech. 3:4).