davidbowerkingwood

There is a Fatal Flaw in Comparing Yourself to Others!

This past week I had the opportunity to present the gospel to an individual who simply could not understand the concept of grace. He could not understand how someone could live a bad life, receive Jesus Christ as Savior and then go to heaven.

He believed he had lived a good life, followed the straight and narrow, and deserved God’s recognition for the quality of his life. He felt this should serve as his doorway to heaven and that should be enough.

Sadly, this individual has a great deal of company as way too many are inclined to believe their works should open doors to heaven. They compare themselves with others and see their decisions and actions as superior to others they know or can imagine.

Jesus Helps Nicodemus Understand Reality

The Bible speaks very clearly to that mistaken notion in John 3 where we read of Nicodemus, a man who had every earthly reason to think well of himself, and his secret visit to Jesus Christ. Nicodemus was a respected Pharisee, a teacher of the Law, and a ranking member of the Jewish Sanhedrin.

Jesus immediately cuts to the root of the matter and tells Nicodemus:

“Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

No reference to all that Nicodemus had accomplished or the lofty and respected positions he held in Jerusalem, just a warning that one must be born again!

Not surprisingly, Nicodemus had no idea what Jesus was talking about; equally not surprising, most people today do not understand what Jesus was talking about. The basic truth has never changed, unless one is born again, they cannot see the kingdom of God!

Works Versus Personal Sin

As an online missionary for Global Media Outreach, I encounter a lot of concern about personal sins. Those of us who love the Lord Jesus as our Savior are painfully aware of our failure to live up to the Godly standards described in the Bible.

We are assured, in the Bible, this is all a part of being a Christian; we must struggle with and seek to suppress our tendency to sin. In 1 John 1:8-10 we read:

“⁸ If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. ⁹ If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. ¹⁰ If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.”

Personal sin is a symptom of our problem, not the problem itself. There are many different sorts of viral infections which produce a vast assortment of symptoms, yet the symptoms are not viruses, just evidence the virus is present!

Personal sin is a symptom of the virus we inherited at birth, the virus is the spiritual death we inherited from Adam; there is nothing whatsoever we can do or not do that will change the fact of our birth, absolutely nothing!

WE MUST BE BORN AGAIN TO A DIFFERENT FATHER!

What we could not do, God could do for us by sending his Son to die for our sins! By simple faith in Jesus Christ as Savior, we can be born again by the power of God, the Holy Spirit, given a living spirit and a new Father which delivers us from the Adamic curse with which we were born!

The Bible strives to make this clear, in Ephesians 2:4-10 it is written:

“⁴ But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, ⁵ even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), ⁶ and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, ⁷ that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. ⁸ For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, ⁹ not of works, lest anyone should boast. ¹⁰ For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”

Once we are born again by faith in Jesus Christ as Savior, we are adopted children of God, the Father, and become members of His family now and forever! Nothing can change that, nothing at all! In Romans 8:38-39 we are promised:

 ³⁸ For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, ³⁹ nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.