“But the other criminal protested, ‘Don’t you fear God even when you have been sentenced to die? We deserve to die for our crimes, but this man hasn’t done anything wrong.’ Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when You come into Your Kingdom.’ And Jesus replied, ‘I assure you, today you will be with me in paradise.’” (Luke 23:40-43 NLT)
As we grow older, having followed the Lord Jesus for many years, while we would never admit this publicly (you won’t tell anyone will you? 😊), our hormones are on their last leg, our mind wavers between puddy and cement, the only real rise we get about anything is when someone mentions dessert, so the devil gets frustrated and leaves us alone much of the time. As a result, we get comfortable in what we deem to be our safe spiritual position and are too often tempted to think more highly of ourselves than we ought.
A frightening byproduct of that is our tendency to be critical of others who aren’t as far along on their journey as we are. It’s easy to see a young person struggling with perhaps the very same sin that nearly killed us spiritually, but rather than have compassion, come along side and walk with them, we forget how much we wrestled and what a path of carnage we left in our wake. It’s frightening because it’s wrong and disappoints our Savior and highlights how easy it is to slide into a state of self-sufficiency, believing we’ve arrived when we clearly have not.
It’s as if we’re just waiting to die, wrongly believing the Lord is finished with us, that He has no more spiritual mountains for us to climb or sins for us to overcome. News flash: Satan NEVER stops tempting; thus, God is NEVER finished with us until we draw our last breath.
As a young Pastor I was excited when Dr. D. James Kennedy published his Evangelism Explosion material. It was straightforward, easy to remember, and very helpful in engaging people in listening to the Gospel. A simple question that we would ask was: “If you were to die today and stand before the God of heaven, and He would ask you: ‘Why should I let you into My perfect heaven?’ what would you say?”
Most of the answers I heard started with some version of: “Because I…” “Because I’m a good person.” “Because I was baptized, belong to a church, serve, give, or a thousand other things,” all of which miss the point and stray from the truth of the Gospel. Anytime we begin our defense with a personal pronoun we display our misunderstanding of the Gospel. “I,” “me,” “mine,” etc. places the weight of responsibility of our salvation on our shoulders, and we can never be enough, give enough, serve enough, be good enough to earn a place in heaven.
Think of the conversation with the angel when the man who died on the cross beside Jesus arrived at the gates of Paradise just hours from his conversation with the Savior. The angel asks him who he is and why he’s there? The man is baffled by the angel’s questions. “I’m a thief and I know I don’t deserve to be here.”
The angel continues: “Have you been baptized? Did you repent? Did you say the sinner’s prayer?” All met with a blank stare. Finally, the man says, “I don’t understand any of what you’re asking me. All I know is I’m here because the man on the cross beside me told me I could be.”
Let me leave you with these powerful words from Charitie Lees Smith’s hymn “Before the Throne of God Above” a verse of which says: “Because the sinless Savior died my sinful soul is counted free, for God the just is satisfied to look on Him and pardon me.” HALLELUJAH! WHAT A SAVIOR!
Blessings, Ed 😊
Walking With Jesus 