“God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)
God loves you so much that He sent Jesus to die for you on the cross. Christ died for you. That needs to seep into how you see yourself.
You see you know that you have sinned, you know that you have fallen short of God’s glory, you know that you have failed to meet your own standards let alone anyone else’s. You know you needed to pay a steep price to both be forgiven and to break the power of selfishness and sin in your life.
The good news is that you could not pay that price, but someone who could did – Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The price He paid by dying on the cross took all the punishment for your sin, paid for your forgiveness, your freedom from sin, and brought you into His family, and made you part of the Kingdom of Heaven!
You do not deserve this at all, but God loved you so much He did it even though you did not deserve it. You deserved judgment and punishment, but God loved you so much He did not want to judge you or punish you, and sent Jesus to die your death to make salvation possible for you.
Sometimes people cannot work out how Jesus’ death makes God able to forgive them? Surely there must be another way people ask. Can’t God just choose to forgive?
Paul answers this for us clearly:
God offered Him, so that by His death He should become the means by which people’s sins are forgiven through their faith in Him. God did this in order to demonstrate that He is righteous. In the past He was patient and overlooked people’s sins; but in the present time He deals with their sins, in order to demonstrate His righteousness. In this way God shows that He Himself is righteous and that He puts right everyone who believes in Jesus.” (Romans 3:25-26 GNB)
God is love (1 John 4.16) – so God can only love us. But God is also righteous, He cannot allow things that are imperfect into Heaven. So, until sin is dealt with you cannot rightly be allowed into Heaven or allowed to have Heaven on Earth. But Jesus put us right with God, now it is the right thing to do for God to allow us into Heaven and allow Heaven on Earth for us right now.
Jesus said “No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14.6), that is because no one else ever took the full punishment for your sin, became sin with your sin and made you right with God. But Jesus did and He did it because the Father loves you and the Son loves you. Make that part of your identity today, because it’s true, and it’s more relevant than what any family member, any school teacher, any neighbour, or anyone else has ever said about you!
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