But My Sins Are Too Big To Be Forgiven

       No matter how bad your sin seems in the eyes of people, you can rest in the fact that Jesus is bigger, greater and more powerful than any sin.  It doesn't matter what you've done as long as we ask Jesus to cleanse it all away.  The only unforgivable sin is to refuse to believe in Jesus Christ. This is not to say that there aren't consequences to sin.  Of course there may be and there usually are.  Sin leaves scars.   

     Remember the thieves on the crosses beside Jesus.  One of them mocked and denied Him.  The other couldn't change a single moment of the life he had lived or the choices he had made,  but he called on Jesus to remember him in His kingdom. And Jesus did.  Jesus told him that today he would be with Him in paradise.  If Satan has stolen most of your life on earth, don't let him steal your eternity. 

     Because we live in a fallen world, all of us are sinners.  When given a choice, we all choose sin each in our own way.   Some of them seem particularly nasty and evil and some of them seem benign.   One person might battle with adultery or even murder while another can't control their gossipy tongue.  But your sins are no greater than my sins and my sins are no greater than your sins in the eyes of God.  They keep us separated from Him.  Thankfully, God made a provision for us to break free and be saved from our sins through His death and resurrection.  We must be willing to turn from our sin and turn to the One who saves us from them.  He will look at us as though they were never there at all.

"Blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven,
whose sins are covered. 
Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord will never count against them"  Romans 4: 7-8

Religion or the Gospel?

 Sadly, we're often guilty of allowing "religion" to replace the gospel.  Religion...with all it's rituals, rules and never-ending to-do lists keeps us forever coming up short.  It was a problem in the early church in the Bible and it's a problem now.  We obey God out of thankfulness for what He did on the cross.  Not to win His favor. 

     Do any of these "isms" sound familiar?

• Formalism: the gospel is reduced to church activities and service disconnected from the heart and how life is lived
• Mysticism: the gospel is reduced to dynamic emotional and spiritual experiences
• Activism: the gospel is reduced to participation in Christian causes
• Biblicism: the gospel is reduced to mastery of the biblical content and theology
• Psychology-ism: the gospel is reduced to the healing of emotional needs
• Social-ism: the gospel is reduced to a network of fulfilling Christian relationships
• Legal-ism:  reducing the gospel to "good works" that can be earned for salvation.

     When the church of the Galatians started perverting the gospel of Jesus with the law, Paul came to meet with them and he was furious!  I love what he told them (it's meant for us today, too).   Paul said, "I can't believe your fickleness- how easily you have turned traitor to Him who called you by the grace of Christ by embracing a variant message!  It is not a minor variation, you know; it is completely other, an alien message, a no -message, a lie about God.  Let me be blunt;  If one of us-even an angel from heaven-were to preach something other than what we preached originally, let him be cursed!"  He goes on to say, "is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God?  I refuse to do that, to repudiate God's grace.  If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily.  You crazy Galatians!  Did someone put a hex on you?"

     Let us remember Paul's admonishment when we begin to add things to the gospel.  Paul ends his message by telling the Galatians, "as for me, I am going to boast about nothing but the Cross of our Master, Jesus Christ."