Gospel Thoughts 4

Religion confounds and confuses sinners; but Jesus saves and satisfies sinners. Religion will do and teach anything to distract you from trusting your immortal soul to Jesus Christ.  You have transgressed the Law, and incurred its deadly penalty and curse.  You have sinned against a loving God with impunity. You have become hard, careless, indifferent.  God sees and knows you through and through; He knows the worst and the best about you.  There is nothing hid from God; do not be deluded.  God knows about your character and private life, your motives and desires.  You cannot deceive God for a moment.

If you are lost today, it is because you have something filthy in your heart that you are not willing to surrender and forsake.  There is some private sin you are hanging on to which God hates, and that you love. Get hold of your doubts and drag them up by the roots, and you will find that the roots are sins that you have been clinging to and not willing to give up.  If you are still in your sins now, it is because you are content to remain there. Salvation depends much upon your will.  No man sins until he consents to a particular sin.  If you are neglecting Christ, it is because you love the impure, the worldly, the sinful; you prefer the dirty to the pure.  Only the Blood of Jesus can take away your guilt, the sin stains, the love of sin, and the awful memories of the past.  If you won't trust Jesus Christ, you are headed for an eternal catastrophe.  Jesus will never save you against your will.

What am I? What am I doing with this precious life that God has given me?  How am I treating God?  For what am I living? How do I stand in relation to the Bible, the revealed will of God?

Education cannot take away your guilt.  You have a terminal human condition called Sin.  Human nature avoids the Bible, because the Scriptures expose our sinful condition.  There is no cure for your sin problem but the atoning precious blood of the Son of God.

The Son of God paid your sins' penalty, and endured the wrath due to your iniquities.  Someone must be punished for your sins, and if you die rejecting Christ, you will have to pay the just penalty of your evil deeds, and it will send you straight to the lowest Hell.  I was under condemnation because of my guilt, but Jesus became the great Substitute for sinners, and bore upon Himself the punishment due to human guilt.

Jesus bore my sins and its penalty, so I could go free.  Christ Jesus was punished for my sins, now I can never be punished for them.  Jesus said, "Father, I will bear the sinner's punishment, lay it all on Me, and let him go free."  The offended One was punished in the place of the offender.  Jesus was punished for me, and now my sins shall never be mentioned or remembered any more, but all are freely forgiven, because God punished Christ Jesus instead of me.  The Holy Spirit causes us to sense our sin, guilt and danger, dread sin's punishment, and gives us a consciousness of our inability to save ourselves.

The Substitution of Christ in my place, the imputation of my sins to Him, and His Righteousness to me.  Come not to God directly, but come unto Him through the atoning Mediator, the man Christ Jesus. Jesus kept the Law, bore your sins in His own body, and endured the punishment due to all your sins.  You are full of sin, but God will not set that to your account if you trust in His Son's Atonement. You are in debt, you owe a great sum that you can never pay, but the Person you owe so much will turn all your debts to His account book, and say, "I have nothing down against you." But it must go down somewhere.  Your debt is set down to the account of Christ.

This is how Christ Jesus can save you from the love of sin - He can save you, because He did not save Himself; He can save you, because He took your guilt and endured your punishment.  There is no way of Salvation apart from the satisfaction of divine justice.  God has a debt against us, and He will never remit that debt until it is justly paid.  Christ pays it with His own blood, and the poor sinner goes free.   Christ Jesus satisfied divine justice to the uttermost.

You are guilty, but the moment you believe in Christ's blood, His pardon at once you receive and your sins are no longer yours.  Your sins are laid upon Christ, and they are gone.  You stand guiltless in the sight of God, and are accepted in the Beloved.  This is the doctrine of Justification.  The sinful man ceases to be regarded by divine justice as a guilty being.  The moment he believes on Christ, his guilt is all taken away, he becomes righteous inwardly, and God is at peace with him.  Christ takes your sins, you take His Righteousness, that is Salvation.  Jesus said, "As the Father loved Me, so have I loved you."

David and Jonathan swapped garments - Christ takes your sins, you take His Righteousness. This is the glorious Substitution and exchange of places that takes place when you are born again.  This is how sinners go free and are justified by grace. Religion is the natural man trying to get to Heaven by his own efforts.  I need God 's mercy in Christ.  Stop worshipping yourself.  Human nature tries to earn eternal life by its own goodness.  You can't bribe the Judge of all the Earth, only Jesus can satisfy the Judge's demands.

The Victim of Calvary offered Himself up to divine justice in your place.  Man has sinned, and the divine Law requires eternal punishment.  Christ Jesus, the eternal God, condescended to become a Jewish man.  He was born of a Jewish virgin called Mary, He was cradled in a manger in Bethlehem.  He lived a life of holy obedience, reproach and suffering, and at the last He died a bloody death of agony.  He was the Creator, Preserver, and Lord of all.  The Creator Himself underwent the punishment for human sin.  The divine Preserver of the world bled and died on the Cross.

Christ's bloody death paid the full penalty of divine justice.  The black cloud of divine justice and vengeance emptied out itself upon the Sin-Bearer who was nailed to the Cross for you.  Jesus was punished to the full, so you could be freely forgiven.  Every sin of mine receive its sentence in Jesus' death.  Jesus died for all sinners, liars, thieves, adulterers, lascivious fornicators and greedy idolators.  It is Christ that died.

Human nature hugs sin and seeks to cloak it.  Human nature would rather take the blame for its sin, than let Jesus take the blame.  Human tries to appease God by making itself better.  The only person in control of my destiny with God is Jesus Himself.  The atheist bets his soul on evolution and trusts in the conjectures of darwin.  The atheist walks in rebellion and loves his sins. An idolator is someone who makes up a god to suit his own filthy lifestyle; he creates a god he feels comfortable with in his sins. The idolator says, "I think God is like this, I will shape a god in my mind that I am comfortable with."

If you make a difference in the world, and make this world a better place to live in, you are still lost and on your way to Hell.  You're only good by your own standards; but God's standards is moral Perfection in thought, word and deed.  Moral perfection is absolutely impossible for any sinner.  God is a holy Judge, and we are heinous criminals in His sight.  We have all violated His commandments continually.  Jesus paid our fine, so if we simply trust to His atoning Blood, we can walk out of God's Courtroom free with our record cancelled and forgiven. God will commute your death sentence, only for Jesus' sake.

Give up your self-righteousness, and trust in the mercy of God in Christ.  Jesus' perfect obedience now makes it possible for His Righteousness to justify the ungodly, and makes him that believes in Jesus' spotless before God.  Jesus' death on Calvary was the perfect Atonement to divine justice.  Only Jesus' infinite Sacrifice could satisfy infinite divine justice and magnify the broken Law of God.  Nothing short of the power of the Holy Ghost and the Gospel can renew the human heart.

Human nature attempts to atone for sin by its own efforts, and to cleanse and purify the human heart by religiousness, but it always fails.  By Jesus' passive and active obedience, He satisfied the claims and demands of divine justice. Christ's blood speaks pardon and mercy to the guilty. Jesus paid the debt due to divine justice for you.  Jesus was treated as the sinner had richly deserved to be treated.  The one and only way of Safety for you is to place Faith in Jesus' precious blood.  God's hatred for sin is so deep that He spared not His own Son.

Divine justice is no respecter of persons.  There's a fatal Lawsuit against you now, brought on you by divine justice.  The depraved intellect of sinful man rails at divine justice.  Divine justice haunts every guilty sinner.  The Precious Blood of the Incarnate God is the satisfaction to divine vengeance.  There is only one way of Salvation, one Atonement, one Propitiation, one Foundation, one Gospel - His name is Jesus.  Be obedient to the Gospel - Believe that Jesus was God in human flesh, trust Him because He suffered in your place, believe that divine justice is satisfied by the bloody death of Christ, rely upon the Atonement which Christ has finished, that's what is means to be saved, and to be obedient to the Faith.

Come to God resting upon what Christ has done, depending alone upon the Propitiation which Jesus accomplished.  You're in an awful sinful state.  You were born in sin, and live in a depraved state.  Your sins have made you obnoxious and obstinate to God.  You deserve the justice and wrath of God.  Human nature is desperately set on rejecting God's offers of divine mercy and charity.  There is no human means which can bring a sinful soul to God.  Man is such an enemy to God that he will not be reconciled to God, but Jesus still tenderly pleads with you to come to Him today.  I leave it all with Jesus.