Getting Things Right | 01.14.13

Last week, I read a Facebook status that interestingly enough said, "You do not have to get things right before you can come to God."  I couldn't agree more with this statement because, as I understand it, we come to GOD BECAUSE we've accepted the fact that He's already made things right.  That which is wrong between GOD and man has already been made right by Him, so the only role we play in this scenario is that of accepting GOD's offer to now be right with Him forevermore.  Our wrongful condition was something mankind inherited from Adam that separated us from GOD at conception.  (Yes, we were sinners BEFORE we could even do anything sinful.)  However, the offer to be in right standing with GOD is now available through Christ Jesus alone; and we choose to either accept or refuse what GOD the Father has already put in place for us to "get things right" with Him.  There's no more work to be done for us to be right because GOD Himself completed that.  We only need to receive by faith GOD's gift of salvation unto eternal life as the finished work of righteousness.

Now, it can be said that a person comes to GOD TO get things right; but in order for that to be totally accurate, it must first be established what "things" concerning a person that, in fact, need to "get right."  One of the greatest downfalls of our attempts at evangelism has been Christians drawing attention to the ungodly lifestyle behaviors of the unsaved in order to win souls.  Sadly, it's these ungodly lifestyle behaviors that are the wrong "things" sinners are generally told they must come to GOD to "get right."  While I do believe that the choice to live an ungodly lifestyle does not please GOD, I also believe that an ungodly lifestyle is merely the recognizable symptom of an even greater, yet unrecognized problem: THE STATE OF SIN.  Scripture shows us that it's the original, sinful condition (or nature) of man that must be addressed BEFORE the lifestyle of man.  No change in lifestyle behavior can eradicate sin because, as John proclaimed (in John 1:29), Jesus is the Lamb of GOD who TAKES AWAY the sin of the world.  Changing our behavior cannot accomplish the work which only our belief in what Jesus has already done was purposed and designed to do.

What we must understand is that the sin from which mankind MUST be delivered is the sin of unbelief.  "Unbelief in what?," you might ask.  Unbelief that the Lord Jesus, according to Romans 10:9, was raised by GOD the Father from the dead.  You see, to "believe" means to accept as real and true.  Therefore, unbelief is the exact opposite: to deny as real and true (or to accept as fake and false).  To not believe this one, simple truth that GOD raised Jesus from the dead is the greatest wrong any man can ever do: it's to deny that GOD is indeed who He says He is.  It's just that simple, friends.  There's nothing complicated about it.  For all practical purposes, denying that GOD is who He says He is means a person pretty much identifies Him as being a liar. That's basically what the sin of unbelief does.  And because the sin of unbelief looks GOD square in the face and calls Him a liar, it establishes a paradigm of thinking in an individual's mind that has absolutely no regard for GOD.  It's this lack of regard that ultimately manifests the ungodly behavior Christians have come to understand as the life of sin, as opposed to getting to the root of unbelief.

TO BE CONTINUED...  READ PART 2