Excuses… I hear a lot of them… I live in the south in the area known as the “Bible belt”… Around here we know how to wield our scripture like a large hammer…. As a result we are always thinking of ways to justify our actions…. Both the wielded upon and the wielders have to make excuses…. The wielded upon, because they don’t want to get whacked with that hammer and the wielder because they like whacking so much…. Everybody makes a bunch of excuses…. Everyone is trying to cover up their own personal sin…. Of course in reality, that is not just here in the “Bible Belt”…. It is everywhere on the planet…. They just wield different hammers…..
The excuses and the human judgment used by the hammer wielders are the result of the human problem of sin….. People sin because we are sinners…. We are born with this rebellion of God built in…. We inherited it from the original sinners…. One thing that we have to remember is that we probably, no…we would have defiantly started this cycle of sin if we were the first… We are born God haters because we want to be in charge of us…. The problem with the excuse makers and the hammer wielders is that we are so good at it that we think we don’t need God sticking His nose in our business… That is one of the reasons that it is so hard to tell folks about Jesus…. The excuse makers think that the hammer wielders are a picture of God…. The sad truth is that the hammer wielders don’t come close to either the wrath of God’s holiness or the love of God’s holy Son….
The wrath of God’s holiness demands death…. When God created mankind He made humans in the perfect image of Himself…. He did that knowing that we would rebel against Him… However, He set the standard of perfection as the way for humans to live their lives…. After all we were created perfect… This penalty, death means the absence of life… One way to look at it is at the end of our physical life, there is death, or no more life….. However, when our physical body dies, who we are or our soul lives forever…. The true penalty or wrath of God means that the part of us that goes on forever will do so without the presence of the Life giver, God Himself…. We call that place Hell…. It is a place of eternal torment…. So you see that for us to make someone feel a little guilty just isn’t enough….. Even if someone stops doing whatever sin that they are committing, it won’t keep them going to hell…. As a matter of a fact, there is nothing any of us can do to stop the wrath of God….
In reality on the other end of the spectrum we don’t have enough love in us, by ourselves, to show how much God loves us…. We are too much into self-preservation to portray the love of Jesus…. Our sin nature calls us to protect our own stuff before we take care of someone else…… On my own, I love me a lot more than I love you… Without the love of Jesus in me, I just love what I can get from you…. As a matter of fact, I just love God for what I can get from Him… I hope what I am going to say don’t hurt you too much, but without Jesus, you are the same way… You can’t stop someone from experiencing the wrath of God without the love of Jesus in you…. Only God’s kind of love will convince someone to turn to Him so that they will not have to go to hell…..
God’s plan, from the beginning was to provide a way for us to have eternal life…. As I said before, God created humans perfectly in His image… He also gave the humans the ability to reject that perfection and His love…. The desire to be the perfect me without God is what drives my rebellion against God….. God’s word calls it “pride”…
Since God’s desire is to have someone love Him with the same kind of love that He has for the world of human beings He had to do it that way….
The only way for His perfect Holiness to be satisfied is for perfection to suffer the penalty of His perfect wrath… God’s perfect love caused God Himself to step into a human body and die the perfect physical and spiritual death…. Being God, Jesus did not have to stay in that state of death forever…. Those of us who accept God’s free gift of life have the penalty of God’s Holy wrath removed from our life… Because of our sin we could die a million deaths and not remove our first sin…..
However, because of Jesus’ death on the cross, His subsequent burial, and His resurrection…. We can have eternal life…. The only thing we can do to have the eternal life with the life giver is accept Jesus’ sacrifice as a free gift…
The only way we can get folks to accept that free gift of eternal life that Jesus offers is to surrender our lives over to God the Holy Spirit…. Jesus will reveal Himself and His love in and through us to a lost and dying world of people….
I have to get me out of the way or I’ll just beat folks over the head with my hammer that is so small that I will drive them away from our really big God….
John 3:16–21 “For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 17 God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.
18 “There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him. But anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God’s one and only Son. 19 And the judgment is based on this fact: God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil. 20 All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be exposed. 21 But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see that they are doing what God wants.”
John 14:12–14 “I tell you the truth, anyone who believes in me will do the same works I have done, and even greater works, because I am going to be with the Father. 13 You can ask for anything in my name, and I will do it, so that the Son can bring glory to the Father. 14 Yes, ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it!
Romans 12:1–2 (NLT) And so, dear brothers and sisters,* I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him.* 2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.
