September 20
Isaiah 32-33
Psalm 105:37-45
Proverbs 23:9-11
Colossians 2
Dead --> Alive
“When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; He has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.” Colossians 2:13-14
There is a misconception about Christianity that many nonbelievers have and unfortunately, I think many Christians have the same idea. It is this idea that it is all about being a good person vs. being a bad person. The problem is that no one thinks they are a bad person. There is always someone that you can think of that is worse than you and you can always come up with excuses for why you do all the things you do. Everyone looks pretty good in their own eyes. So, by that standard, no one thinks they need to be saved. The truth is that all of us are bad people. “There is no one righteous, not even one. All have turned away, there is no one who does good, not even one.” Romans 3:10-12 The thing is that it isn’t about being good or bad. It isn’t about following a list of rules so that our good deeds outweigh our bad deeds. At the end of our life, we are not going to get to heaven and have God look over our life and see if overall we did more good stuff than bad stuff and let us in. He isn’t comparing us to other people to see if we get to come in. I think we will all be shocked to see some of the people that are there. Ted Bundy, the serial killer, claims to have accepted Jesus as his personal Savior in prison. If he did, he is in heaven now. We would all agree that he was a bad person. I’m convinced that the idea of good vs. bad was devised by Satan to confuse us. From the world’s perspective, I’m sure there are a lot of “good” people that will end up in hell and a lot of “bad” people in heaven.
This verse is very clear that it is not about good verses bad. It is about dead verses alive. We are all condemned to death. We are living on death row because we willfully choose sin, selfishness, and rebellion. No one is righteous. No one is perfect. When we come to the realization that we are dead in our sins and ask Jesus to forgive us and save us, our sins are nailed to the cross, and buried with Him. We are raised to life through His resurrection. We go from being dead in our sins to being alive in Christ. Instead of Christianity being about being good or bad, it is about being dead or alive. It is a totally different discussion. Once we are made alive in Christ, He begins the work of sanctification, the process of making us more like Him. He begins to work in our hearts to take away the sinful attitudes and behaviors. This takes time. This side of heaven none of us will ever be perfectly righteous. We will not always be good. Some bad stuff still shows up in our actions, but thankfully our salvation is not dependent on our goodness. We are no longer dead. We have been made alive in Christ. This is the gospel message.
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