Today is a day of questions. I have heard so many questions from so many people in my time of following our King that are legitimate questions. But the one that baffles me most is when the enemy tells them the lie that they have done too much, gone too far, for the grace of the King to extend to them.
This simply isn't true.
In my circle of people, the good news is a means of understanding that we are so undeserving, so broken, so imperfect, so sinful, so dirty and awful, that there is absolutely no way for us to make our own way to Him. We can't do anything to get there. We can't make our lives pretty enough, good enough, helpful enough, loving enough to even get close to the mark of perfect He has set. We are inadequate. We are undeserving of Glory.
And it seems that those who ask the question, "have I gone too far for Him to accept me now?" They get it. They understand that they have fallen short, that they have gone far enough to be undeserving. The problem with this thinking is that they, often times, see their lives, their sin, their undeservingness (is that even a word? Probably not, but whatever), as more dispicable than that of others. This is also untrue.
Sin is a funny word. So many people view it as the "bad" we do. It typically is associated with lying, cheating, stealing, killing, etc. But the word used in the Bible, literally translated from the Greek means "to miss the mark". As a human being, we are imperfect creatures. Everything we do is marred by our imperfection. There is no "good" deed. That is to say, if I give food to a starving family, there is some part of me (however small, miniscule it might or might not be) that does it for the wrong reasons. There is no unselfish act, which makes all actions imperfect. We have missed the mark, in everything we do.
That being said, there are no people who are more or less undeserving. There are no people who are worse, in terms of our amazing King. He sees us all as equally undeserving, but also valuable. Seeing us, as broken and undeserving as we are, he died for us. Knowing that all he would gain was people who have been his enemies, he died for us.
And herein lies the truth: there is nothing too far from God, that he cannot rescue.
I talked about Hosea a few posts back. He was the prophet that married a prostitute named Gomer. Just to refresh, here is what God says Gomer should get.:
"Rebuke your mother, rebuke her,
for she is not my wife,
and I am not her husband.
Let her remove the adulterous look from her face
and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts.
3 Otherwise I will strip her naked
and make her as bare as on the day she was born;
I will make her like a desert,
turn her into a parched land,
and slay her with thirst.
4 I will not show my love to her children,
because they are the children of adultery.
5 Their mother has been unfaithful
and has conceived them in disgrace.
She said, ‘I will go after my lovers,
who give me my food and my water,
my wool and my linen, my olive oil and my drink.’
6 Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes;
I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way.
7 She will chase after her lovers but not catch them;
she will look for them but not find them.
Then she will say,
‘I will go back to my husband as at first,
for then I was better off than now.’
8 She has not acknowledged that I was the one
who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil,
who lavished on her the silver and gold—
which they used for Baal.
9 “Therefore I will take away my grain when it ripens,
and my new wine when it is ready.
I will take back my wool and my linen,
intended to cover her naked body.
10 So now I will expose her lewdness
before the eyes of her lovers;
no one will take her out of my hands.
11 I will stop all her celebrations:
her yearly festivals, her New Moons,
her Sabbath days—all her appointed festivals.
12 I will ruin her vines and her fig trees,
which she said were her pay from her lovers;
I will make them a thicket,
and wild animals will devour them.
13 I will punish her for the days
she burned incense to the Baals;
she decked herself with rings and jewelry,
and went after her lovers,
but me she forgot,”
declares the LORD.
Gomer is in for some awful things. She should be stripped and shown for who she is, her adultery exposed, her head shaved, the whole 9 yards. But the word that comes after this rant, this list of awfulness that she deserves, He says the word "therefore". And I ranted last time about this word. It is such an awesome word. It insinuates that what comes next is a direct result of everything she has done and deserves. But what comes after the "therefore" is not punishment, it is LOVE. God says: "Therefore, behold, I will allure her... and speak tenderly to her... and I will betroth you to me forever." (Hosea 2:14-20)
This is by and far the result of an amazing God who loves us, despite our worst. This is what we get for what we deserve. A God who desires us, who wants to allure us and betroth us to Him, forever. This is not an unforgiving God, this is not a God that hates us, this is a God who has mercy on us, even after our sinfulness.
<3
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