God “will repay each
person according to what they have done.”
No matter how much I exercised and built up my bodily
strength, I will never be able to lift my truck above my head. If I spent the
rest of my life with shovel in hand, digging tirelessly, I will never be able
to move a mountain from one spot to another. There are certain things that are
just completely impossible. No matter what I try or how hard I work, they will remain
insurmountable and impossible to achieve. Standing blameless before the Lord under
my own merits falls into that impossible category. No matter how many times I
do the right thing or how hard I work to please the Lord, I can never do enough
to earn his mercy and forgiveness. I can never say enough prayers or perform
enough rituals to be seen in a favorable light before the Lord when this life comes
to a close. God gave the world his commands and he said follow them perfectly.
No room for mistakes, no margin for error, no re-dos. Get them right the first
time and every time...and if you don’t, then you fail. Period. But God realized
the deep inability of his people…he realized that unless he intervened and did
something on behalf of his people, all would perish. All would be found completely
guilty and since God is a just God, and God must always do what is right, all would
receive their just punishment. Hell. Period. Thankfully that’s not the end of the
story. God sent a substitute and that substitute took our punishment and beat
it for us. Christ paid in full for our crimes against God. Through faith in Christ,
we have hope, redemption, and promised salvation…apart from Christ we have
complete agony, defeat, and eternal condemnation. I am convinced that we are
unable to really conceptualize the misery that hell will be and the greatness
that heaven will be. They simply exceed, in both bad and good, anything we have
experienced here on earth. I am also convinced that there is hardly one person
that would raise their hand and say, “Yes, I’ll take the hell please”. No, we
would all be crowding into the heaven line. And the only way into that line is
through deep, genuine, and professed faith in Christ as the one and only Savior
of our souls. Apart from Christ, achieving salvation is impossible. Make we
seek each day to deepen our relationship with the Lord, leaving no doubt in the
end where we stand…and may we give thanks each day, that the Creator
mercilessly provided a way for making the impossible possible. To God alone be
the glory!
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