Imagine you are standing in a courtroom in front of a judge. You are not the court reporter or a member of the audience. You are the defendant in a capital murder case. The crowd comes to a hush as the judge begins to hand out the verdict. He unveils a piece of paper and announces, “On the count of first-degree murder, we find the defendant guilty as charged.” The crowd murmurs as you are led away to prison, having been found guilty of your crime.
Your sentence? Death.
The penalty of sin is death
Hopefully, you will never find yourself in a situation like this. However, if we substitute a heavenly scene for this one, we all find ourselves in this terrible predicament. You may not have murdered anyone, but we have all committed evil against God, the Bible calls this SIN.
What is sin? It’s the condition that all of us live in, in this fallen world. The fruit of sin makes us choose to go our own way rather than obey God. The out-working of sin is a list of behaviours that come from our heart that lead us to do, think or say things that are not in accordance with God’s character or His will for our lives.
Where did sin creep into our hearts and corrupt our character? It all started with Gods’ creation of Adam and Eve who initially lived in perfect harmony with God. Until the the moment they were tempted by Satan to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil – which was forbidden by God – they lived sinless. They chose to disobey God by listening to the serpent, the deceiver, and eating the fruit of the tree. The consequence of choosing not to follow God was that sin entered into the human experience, and death (physical and spiritual) came as the inevitable consequence of living outside of God’s design and will.
The good news
All of humanity has sinned, except for Jesus. If we were put on trial before God, the ultimate Judge, we would all be found guilty and ultimately receive the punishment of death in an eternal place called Hell, where we would be completely separated from God. Our verdict would be an easy one – guilty.
We are all guilty of the same core sin – rejecting God.
But here’s the good news! We do not need to accept the verdict of guilt, we have a life-giving option available to us. The Bible also speaks of righteousness, this is being in right standing with God – without sin. In our own strength we can’t rid ourselves of sin, we can’t live a sinless life without the intervention of God in our lives – we need to choose His intervention. We can’t access righteousness if we live separately from God. We have to be JUSTIFIED by God to obtain this righteousness. Which He did through Jesus on the cross. God has given us the free gift of justification, all we need to do is accept it. Isn’t that amazing?
To conclude, let’s celebrate the good news! Justification is a legal declaration from God that you are innocent of all your sin.
This idea of being made free of sin and standing blamelessly before God is comforting and hopeful. The good news is that it’s not about working off your debt to God, but simply by believing in Jesus Christ as your Saviour. If you trust in Him, you will receive His righteousness. Jesus has covered your sin through His act on the cross. All your impurity will be made perfect through Christ because He lived a sinless, blameless life. The Bible describes this act as though God clothes us with His own perfection, hiding our imperfection so that we can live in harmony with Him once more.
His verdict for us? Blameless and innocent of sin.
If you want to choose Jesus, His love and all that He did to save you from sin, please get hold of us. We would love to pray with you and walk this journey with you! WhatsApp us on 071 473 0313, email us at prayer@cbnsa.org or call us on 021 701 1776. Or fill in the form below. We look forward to hearing from you!
