God is good. Don't let anyone fool you though; God is a just and disciplined father as well. He wants only good for us, just like I only want good for you. If I have to punish you, or tell you what you're doing is wrong, it's not because I don't love you, but because I want you to stop doing the things that will get you lost, hurt, and in trouble. Just as I raise you with discipline and love, so does God raise us.
And he sacrificed himself by giving his son for us. It's a mystery, because Jesus was God's son, but also equally God. So Jesus shows us how unselfish God's love is. And who can imagine how hard it would be to send your only son to suffer more than anyone ever had suffered for the good of people who did not even love him back! This perfect love, a love greater than any we will ever have, is an example for us, an ideal, and it saved us.
What did it save us from? From sin and death. Most people don't understand sin these days. All they can see is that it means they are bad, and that God doesn't like them. Well, it's true that we are bad without the influence of God. How else can we explain all the evil that men do? I think without God, we'd have a much worse time here in the world. Since we've had the influence of the holy spirit on men and ciricumstances for thousands of years, maybe we don't remember what it was like without it.
So we all have sin- ever since Adam. Don't worry about whether Adam was a real man, or if it was fiction. If we take the Bible seriously, we have to say he was a real man, the first one- but don't get lost in that debate. In any case, people do all kinds of things to avoid believing they have sin. They may make mistakes, they think, but that's ok. And it is. They may not be perfect, they think, but that's ok. And it is. But only if you have God, because otherwise we are lost, and life is a meaningless, random series of mistakes. And no one was ever perfect, they think, but they're wrong. Jesus was perfect. He was the perfect human. But he was more than an example; he was a sacrifice for us, a gift from the ultimate Father with the greatest Love there is.
But to avoid admitting they have sin, a deeply rooted evil, in them, people will say that God is love and only one kind of live. The Nice God. They believe that God is like a weak overweight woman- that he'll let you do whatever you want because he loves you. Partly true. No matter what you do wrong, he still loves you. True. I think that this misperception about who God is may come from the sin that has taken men out of families, and the influence of real fathers away from sons; as a result, we have only mama's boys who were never strengthened by a Godly discipline. They only know mom's soft love, and dad's harsh wrongness. They cannot imagine a good discipline, a person who loves them telling them they need to change their ways.Well, he will let you do whatever you want, and he does love you, but that doesn't mean he approves of all your actions, or that all roads lead to Him. He does love you no matter what you do wrong, but he still knows you are wrong. If he is perfect, and we are imperfect, how could we not be wrong?! How could we not need him? How could we not need his guidance and his Way?
So the next strategy to avoid honesty with self is to believe that we are all little gods. We all have god within us. Well, the Bible says that we are all children of God, created in his image- that means we have his likeness. But we are less than God, even if we are a bit more than angels. The angels are used for other heresies... but to me those beliefs are obviously weird- why go to some weird spirit you've never heard of instead of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, or God? In any case, though we are cut from the same mold, we do not have the same perfection that God does. His spirit influences us IF we have accepted Jesus. I just heard J. Vernon McGee say that if you are unsaved, all God wants from you is to accept the gift of his son. That's it. Until you do that, there's nothing else for you but to be lost in sin. You do have the goodness that comes from those who have the influence of the Holy Spirit, and those who are for some time able to imitate goodness (even if they don't truly have it). But you have only one issue before you, and that is to admit that you have this problem of sin, that you need God to deal with that, and that His chosen way to deal with it was to give you his Son. And until you accept the son, you are lost. It's obvious that we are not little gods without the Spirit... if we were God, we could create things, we could change reality, we could have whatever we wanted, we'd be perfect. If you believe that, you're in big trouble, because you'll think all your anger is righteous, and all your ideas are good. Conscience cannot reach a person like that, so they do all kinds of damage. There's not much difference between that and a sociopath.
So why would God let people stay lost? Why should they go to Hell? Well, if God made them choose him, it wouldn't be a choice, we wouldn't have free will, and we wouldn't have to talk about any of this! In a way, it's because he respects us, because we are his children and made in his image. We have the ability to see the truth of sin and God and Jesus. We can make the right choice. If we don't, and we choose to embrace sin instead, then we probably wouldn't like Heaven much anyway. Let's take someone who loves to lazily indulge in random sex and drugs and selfishness... wouldn't it be wrong to make that person go into a lively Church service and worship God? Well what do you think Heaven is? If you think it's one big orgy followed by a buffet, you're definitely stuck in sin. Heaven will not be an opportunity for you to indulge in sinful lusts and desires. It will be your reward for refusing those things on earth! We're gonna worship God in Heaven. If you don't like that here on earth, you're gonna hate Heaven. Hell is much worse, but the life of sin is more like Hell than Heaven. Except, I think Satan uses some of his influence to make sin kinda enjoyable here- gives us the illusion that it's fulfilling- but it's a temporary satisfaction- as Mick Jagger pointed out. It's not the ultimate satisfaction. It doesn't last and keep on giving and stay pure like the memory of unselfish giving does.
So, there's only one choice. Admit you have sin. Admit you can't fix that yourself. Admit you've been avoiding it and running from God. Choose to go home like the prodigal son. God wants you back. He loves you. He misses you. He's a real Father with real Love. You need Him. Don't spit in his face and reject his Son. Don't crucify his Son again. Don't make his incredible sacrifice meaningless. How could you be so selfish and disrespectful? Instead, thank Him. Tell Him you finally understand. You need the Son. You don't want to stay lost. You want to be saved from sin, death, and Hell. You want the influence of the Holy Spirit while you're here on earth. You want to find out how good real worship is. You want to be in Heaven with your real Father's real Love forever. Pray to Him right now and tell him.
That's the most important thing you'll ever do!
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