All That Matters

So I had planned an elaborate and (I thought) brilliant post about South Carolina, the shooting, racism, the Confederate flag, gun control, and so on.  It was going to be epic, convicting, and theologically astounding.  But I have come to realize this week that time is short, and we may not have many more opportunities to talk about what really matters in life, and that is the Gospel.

The Gospel is all that matters. Period.  So, while we've discussed these things before in numerous other posts, I want to bring it together here:  The Gospel is God loving you even though you don't deserve it.

I'm going to lay out a fundamental, yet painful truth:  you do not deserve God's love.  Yes, you.  You, right here, right now, reading this, do not deserve God's love; He owes you nothing, because you have lived most of your life pursuing yourself.  You have lived for your dreams, your desires, your wants.  Even when you've been selfless, it's mostly because you wanted to feel better about yourself.  And you've done it all at the expense of God.  We call this sin, and, as I've said a hundred times before, sin is nothing short of treason against the Creator.

In order to grasp the Gospel of Jesus, we must all lay hold of this fundamental truth.  We cannot gloss over it, ignore it, or downplay it.  You and I - for I am right here with you - deserve God's wrath.  Sin has no boundaries, but extends through religions, sexualities, gender, political parties, and any other category we could possibly think of.  No one is without sin.  There are none who are righteous, not a single one of us.

But here's the good part:  God loves us still.  When we sin, God loves us.  When we fight against God's will, He still loves us.  When we pretend (or even convince ourselves) that He doesn't exist, He still loves us.  He became one of us in the person of Jesus, lived a life in complete submission to God, died for us, and then got back up.  All God asks is that we trust Him.

That's really all He's ever wanted from us.  And so, even though we trust ourselves more, even though we trust other people more, He died in order to prove that He's trustworthy.  And where sin is limitless, Grace is even more limitless.  Grace is available no matter what your religion is, your sexuality, your gender, your political party, or any other category you could possibly think of.  John writes in 1 John 2:  "He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world."  Get that?  Everyone has the opportunity.   

But you have to believe (John 3:16).  You have to believe that you don't deserve God's love, and you have to believe that Jesus is the proof we need that God loves us anyway.  One day, you will stand before God, and He will ask for an account of your life.  What will you tell your Creator?  That you lived selfishly, without regard to either Him or others?  That you tried to do right by others, but only to impress Him?  His answer is going to be swift and terrible:  "Get out of my sight; you were never Mine."

The late Brennan Manning once said (and I'm paraphrasing, because I can't find the written quote):  the only honest people in the room are going to look at their shoes and say, "Well, frankly, Sir, I screwed up most of my life, but I believed You love me, and I desired to shape and mold my life as a response to that love."  And that, Brennan says, is the difference between true believers and everyone else.  God has saved you.  He's already done it.  Lay hold of it, and watch your life be transformed.

Because time is running out.