The Good News

"If a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law." (Galatians 3:21)
People say that the reason people aren't saved is because they aren't acceptable to God because they fall short of God's standard of holiness, referring to the law. But this tells us that even if you kept all of the law all of the time your whole life you still would die because obedience to the law could never give life. You see mankind's problem is the condition of sin, not the actions of sin. The disease of sin leads to death. Mankind got infected by sin.

God only held people's actions against them under the law to help people become aware of their disease so it would not kill them sooner. God didn't hide from Adam & Eve when they sinned, Adam & Eve hid from God. Sin was never about you being "unworthy" in God's eyes to approach God. Sin was about you being too shame-filled to see God & too sick to make it in the next life & dying forever as a result. The God of life wasn't sitting in heaven too stubborn to forgive impure people. He was doing everything He could to preserve them. It was never about God holding our actions against us. How do we know that? Because Jesus doesn't hold anything against us when offering us the cure for sin.

In the New Testament to "be saved" means to "be cured." Jesus took our disease (sin) on the cross & became the cure. He was injected with our sin to bring about the antidote because He was the only one who had immunity to it. We've been taught that "our sin killed Jesus" & that we should feel really bad about that. But neither is true. Jesus said He would willingly lay down His life. We saw this happen on the cross when Jesus willingly announced the giving up of His Spirit from His body & breathed His last. Jesus defeated sin on the cross. Jesus did not die because sin had the power to kill Him. He died so that He could raise again to life to defeat death. He broke the power of sin & death, sin on the cross, death while coming out of the grave.

If the reason we face death is because God holds our actions against us why would Jesus suffer so intensely & die? If God was just saving us from Himself, instead of suffering He could have just saved Himself the trouble & changed His mind to choose to forgive us. The word forgive in the bible is a poor translation. The word in the bible does not mean "stop being offended" as the English word forgive does. It actually means "to take away." So in today's sense of the word forgive, God never forgave a single person living today. We were all born after the law ended & after the cure had been introduced. God has never counted a single sin against us, blamed us, or been mad at us. God took away our sins on the cross meaning He took away the spiritual barrier that sin created between mankind & God. He also took away the law which charged us with sin. Only by trusting in Him do we take the cure. Taking the cure of Christ makes God able to take away our burden of sin (guilt/shame) & the condition of sin from our spirit which cleanses us from all unrighteousness by giving us a new eternally living spirit that is united with God.


Related Posts
Lifted Up to His Glory:  Talks about how "falling short of God's glory" doesn't picture falling short of some kind of standard.