Doesn’t it seem strange that I am writing about you, yet I have probably never meet you. No, I am not a NSA agent. What I know about you is what I know to be true about everyone. Because we are made in the image of God, we share some attributes of God and we therefore share these attributes with each another. Genesis 1:26 “Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” Don’t be confused, we are godlike but we are not God. We share some attributes with God but the fullness of His attributes we will never have. For more about God, see this link About God.
What I know about you is that you are a moral person, you know what is morally right and what is morally wrong. For instance if you were waiting in a line to see a movie for a long time, over an hour, slowly moving toward the ticket counter and right as you reached the counter, I walked up stepped in front of you. Well, an alarm would go off in your head that I had done something morally wrong to you and to everyone else who has been waiting patiently. You would instantly know that what I did was not fair but why? Cutting in line isn’t a written law, it is an unwritten one that everybody knows and respects … for the most part. This unwritten moral law is written on your heart because you are made in the image of God. Our founding fathers understood this and called it “the Laws of Nature”. This is the reason they wrote the Declaration of Independence, to declare that British had violated the Laws of Nature concerning the people of America and we were therefore justified by God in declaring independence from them. “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
You can see from the image above that man is a three part being of body, soul and spirit. The moral image of God is what allows you to tell right from wrong. Because Adam and Eve ate of the tree, your soul (mind) knows what is the morally right thing to do but because you are Spiritual disconnected from God at birth, you don’t have the Spiritual power to follow through and do the right thing all the time. This disconnected Spiritual state occurred as judgement when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate the forbidden fruit and this disconnected Spiritual condition is passed down to us.
Without a Spiritual connection to God, your spiritual self that is supposed to lead your soul self (your personality, thoughts, reasoning, will and feeling) can not do it’s job correctly. So your soul self is influenced by your own reasoning and your feelings and input from your physical self (your sight, hearing, taste, touch and memories) which is a terrible arrangement. Your feelings make a great caboose but a terrible engine. Your feelings react to the environment and want what is best for #1 (you) at all times. Your soul self has plenty of input from your body, such as memories of what you like and what make you happy but no input from God. Your Spiritual self is disconnected from God which makes trying to live a life pleasing to God an impossible task.
For instance, you have probably thought at some time how much quicker and easier it would be if you cut in front of someone else in line, you probably thought of doing it but didn’t act upon it. This is the temptation to sin but it is not sin. Perhaps, however if you dwelt upon how long you have been waiting in line, you might become upset with all the people in front of you and wished they would hurry up, leave or drop dead. Now, this however is a mental decision to sin, wishing undeserved harm upon someone else, simply to satisfy your selfish desire to be sitting in the movie theater.
Don’t misunderstand, it is not merely doing what is right and striving to be morally right that pleases God. God didn’t send His Son, Jesus, to make bad people good but He came to make dead people alive. Being good for goodness sake, is something that please Santa Clause, not God. Man’s righteousness is like filthy rags before God. Isaiah 64:4 “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.” Man’s ability to do what is right is misguided and self serving because we are Spiritually disconnected from God. A man may have good intentions for what he does but not God’s good and perfect will for what should be done. This is the root of the problem, we are born rebels to God, sinners that are spiritually disconnected from God. We naturally go our way doing our will instead of God’s way and do God’s will.
This disconnected status also has a double death sentence associated with it, (1) your body that is dying and will die (2) your Spirit self that is disconnected from God and will remain permanently disconnected from God if you body dies (this is the second death). Worse still, at physical death, your Soul self will wait in hell to one day be cast into the lake of fire for eternal punishment with Satan, the fallen angels and other unbelievers. This judgment is upon you when you are born, you are born to die physically and then die again Spiritually, unless the Spiritual death sentence that is upon you is pardoned. Nature’s moral law is manifest in your conscience when it convicts you of your immoral behavior and thoughts. I think this is perhaps a Spiritual message from God that is meant to cause you to repent and seek God’s forgiveness in His Son, Jesus Christ. God wants to pardon you, be re-connected to you (born-again) and redeem you. The purpose of the conviction of your sin is not to cause you to take some medication, rationalize your guilt, join a support group, read a self-help book or harden your heart to sin but to be saved from sin. Because God has revealed to each man his sinful nature, man is without excuse before God for rejecting His plan of redemption in Jesus Christ.
Some people say, “well I’m not so bad, I haven’t killed anyone”. But you have killed someone, your sin killed God’s only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. Your sin held Jesus to cross and my sin held Jesus to the cross, we are all murderers. Sin is a serious issue, it is the reason that our bodies decay and die. Sin is the reason that a car rusts, food spoils, weeds overtake the yard and we have to spray WD-40 on things to get them to move. Sin is the reason we fight with one another and the reason we will never be able to live in peace on earth until Christ reigns in each and every heart. Sin must be eliminated in order to usher in a restored heaven and earth. God hasn’t given up on his plan for man to reign and rule on earth but man must first be make into a “Kingdom Citizen” before he is fit to be in God’s Kingdom that will come to earth.
Essentially, what I know about you is that you are a sinner, just like me. You have a knowledge of what is right but a sin nature that does what is wrong. Your sin nature wants to rebel against authority and be in charge. But God is the One who created you for His pleasure and He has the authority to rule over you. Now rebellion is good when we rebel against an immoral authority but this is not the case when we rebel against God. We rebel against God because doing the right thing is hard to do and we don’t want to feel bad about not doing it so we lie to our self, saying that wasn’t so bad. Who cares … God hasn’t struck me down yet. However, God is not mocked by our rejections of Him or our indifference toward Him. Man is without excuse for refusing to acknowledge his sin and repent from it. God has made it clear that salvation in Jesus is they only way to gain eternal life with Him. Romans 1:18-32 explains it best:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.
Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural,and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.
And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.
Don’t wait until your heart is hardened by a lifestyle of sin, to the point where your conscience ceases to convict you of your immoral behavior and thoughts. The worst punishment God can bestow on someone is to be given over to their own sinful heart. Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” For God doesn’t want anyone to remain in a sinful state and perish but to have abundant everlasting life! 2 Peter 3:9 “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”
The bottom line is that you have a free will. God doesn’t force anyone to love Him and spend eternity with Him. You can choose to ignore or disagree with all this information but this will not change God’s word or His will. Ultimately, God is the only One who doesn’t get what He wants since God doesn’t want anyone to perish in their sin. You could say when it comes to salvation, the will of man is greater than the will of God because the unbeliever gets what he wants, to die in his sin and be eternally separated from God and the believer gets what he wants, eternal life in Jesus Christ connected to God. By grace through faith in Jesus Christ you can ask Jesus into your heart and He will save you from the emptiness of sin and fill you with His Holy Spirit. Jesus will give you eternal life if you ask Him to be Lord of your life
“if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” – Romans 10:9
