To Encourage You

Acts 2:37-38 “Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’ And Peter said to them, ‘Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.’”

How bad do you feel about your own sin?  In that most people are caught in the lie that they are basically good people, it is possible that you don’t feel bad about your sin at all.  It’s interesting how a common defense of the movie stars and politicians whose sexual assault has been exposed goes like this: “But that’s not really who I am.”  The problem is that that is exactly who they are, and if the truth be known, they’re probably a lot worse than we are aware.

Unless a person sees the horrible nature of their own sin, they will never come to Christ and be saved.  One of the reasons God gave us His Word was “in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure” (Romans 7:13).  In other words, according to the Bible, people need to realize that they are sinful, and not just a little.  They must realize that they are extremely sinful.  And this is especially true of those who have heard the message of the gospel, and rejected it.  Their sin is so great that God tells us that they stand with the Romans and Jews who participated in the murder of Christ.  By either openly rejecting the gospel, or just being ambivalent to it, “they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm” (Hebrews 6:6).  That is perhaps the most despicable thing anyone can ever do.  They have been told that they are sinners, yet Christ died for them to rescue them from God’s judgment on sin, and they’ve chosen to, in effect, say “so what” and go their merry way.  The truth is that they love their sin so much that they choose that over the One Who alone can save them from that sin and its penalty.  That is a despicable thing, whether a person realizes it or not, and there will be no defense in the end for anyone who rejects the greatest love that has ever been shown to them. They won’t be able to say “but that’s not really who I am” when they stand before the God Who made heaven and earth and Who has written His law on their heart.  There will be no excuses when we stand before Him. 

May God help anyone who knows this to deal with it now, before it’s too late, for some day, perhaps very soon, it will be.