Day 3006 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Hebrews 10:29 NIV

We better watch just how innocent we think ourselves to be.

Sadly though, we tend to gauge everything from our personal perspectives. But in that understanding that we can all agree upon, let’s look at how we ourselves feel about things done unto us. Does it not hurt when someone lies to us? Does it not cause emotional damage whenever our trust is betrayed? Do we not feel miserable when someone else is mean or rude or inconsiderate toward us? And do we not wish for them to make it up to us through an apology or some act that shows their remorse for doing wrong by us?

If we do feel the sting of being done wrong and wish it to be corrected so that we feel validated, why can we not agree that God deserves to feel the same in regard to our transgressions against Him?

If even we ourselves know what it’s like to be wronged and how we wish for the person who treated contemptuously to pay for their mistakes with at least the acknowledgement that they messed up, why do seem to struggle so painfully to offer that same accountability to our Father? Why do we seek to absolve ourselves of guilt when we’re not the victims of wrongdoing? Why do we insist on making ourselves out as the ones to be justified when it’s to Him that we owe a clear apology through an obvious repentance?

One of our biggest challenges comes from the world around us and the direction that most have clearly chosen to go. It's this idea that anything goes. Everyone is completely free to do as they please without having anyone ever question them, debate them, disagree with them or dare point out the obvious issues to them. Humanity has become so terrified of responsibility that we've settled upon this idea of absolute freedom as a means to hopefully validate innocence.

But just because we can manage to come up with such an asinine idea due to the feeble foolishness of our own intelligence does not mean that our Creator will simply agree.

And that's the danger found in our thinking that we have this authority to determine what is right based only whatever happens to be most pleasing to us. Down here, our arrogance may truly never know any limit, but a day is coming when we'll see that the limit was always there, we just thought we could get by with ignoring it. We're playing ourselves my friends, and in this game, we're going to lose if we keep it up.

Why? Well, because God clearly doesn't agree with our lack of seriousness. He doesn't agree with just how little we seem to care about the truth He's given us and the clear lessons He's trying to teach us through it. He very clearly doesn't agree with the fact that we can merely bear the Name of His Son without ever putting forth any effort to bear any fruit that testifies to the fact that our hearts have indeed been reborn into a new way of life without the selfishness we've always known.

Hell exists for a reason, and contrary to what some believe, it's not because God is mean or vengeful or overly jealous. It's because He made it easy to know how to live decent lives and all of humanity has instead chosen to ignore His benevolent kindness by shirking the very Word He chose to give us out of love to help lead us to a promise He created rather than toward the prizes we've preferred.

But still, that reality falls largely upon deaf ears and hardened hearts. Because this society in which we live still obviously holds to this assumption that there is such thing as absolute freedom. Freedom from responsibility. Freedom from consequence. Freedom from morality. Freedom from a single truth. Freedom from opinion. Freedom from warning. Freedom from judgement. Literally freedom from everything. Everything goes when His truth has gone from our hearts.

That's what we see in the story of Calvary. It's not just that Christ died for our sins but that humanity killed an innocent Man. It's not merely about absolution, it's about our attempts to dissolve His existence. It's the story of our salvation won by a Savior who died for the very people who killed Him. And what we need to understand is that it wasn't just the one or two Roman soldiers who drove the nails and held the whip who did the work.

It was each of us.

And our losing sight of that reality, of that truth, of our personal involvement in His earthly demise is what's causing sin to continue ruling our lives. We've gone so far into this mindset that we're not the ones who caused His pain that we can't realize just how guilty we really are. When we're lost in this worldly understanding that has us at least somewhat convinced that our sins are less serious, less dangerous, less costly than others simply because we feel they should be, then our guilt is allowed to lessen.

And our understanding of the personal necessity of His sacrifice to forgive our sins lessens as well.

As I've said in a few posts here recently, it really is amazing all these incredibly flawed ideas we can come up with when our goal is to side-step the cross so that we can avoid the fullness of its message. Again, we're so disconnected from truth and reality because of the many lies we've given ourselves over to believing that we don't realize that what we think just doesn't matter. It matters more than anything here, but it matters so little in the court of eternity that we're heading for a very jarring fall back to reality.

God doesn't rewrite His truth to accommodate our opinions. So while we may be able to convince ourselves that we're somehow innocent in all this, all that's really doing is allowing us to build this assumption that we don't need His mercy all that badly. All it's doing is hindering our salvation simply because we're still kind of toying with figuring out what we actually did wrong. Because we live in this world where nothing is considered wrong anymore.

Sure, with all the different sides and dividing lines popping up all around, there are clear disagreements. One group or ideology views something one way which contrasts and contradicts the opposing perspective, and in that there is always something that we disagree with and think to be wrong. But wouldn't you know it, we're always right in the end, aren't we? Our opinions have been bought as truth, and when we've determined our truth, well, God's just won't register as being quite so important anymore.

When we’re convinced that we've got it figured out, we don't need anyone else telling us how we might be wrong.

And in that tragically common mindset, our guilt is all but impossible. At least impossible for us to see. Thus the cross has become a totem, a trinket, a tiny piece of jewelry worn to show the world that we're good people. We hang a cross on our walls as a reminder that we're going to Heaven. We may even have a shirt or two and a colorful sticker on our car that really hammers home just how awesome we are as the perfect Christians we see ourselves to be.

But the issue with all the imagery that we've turned the cross into is that, just like we discussed a couple of days ago, it's half the story. It's the half that points to the promise we expect. It's a reminder of the home that awaits. It's a visual representation of the love we've received. But left to slip through the cracks is the reality that we're the ones who caused it. We're the ones who went looking for some thorns to make into a crown of mockery. We're the ones who spat and laughed and made fun of the One who would hang there in agony.

We're the hands that held the hammer that drove the nails that held an innocent Man in the place of a guilty sinner. We are that guilty sinner. And we need to be careful as to just how long we ignore that part of the Gospel. Because it cannot fulfill its work until we allow ourselves to acknowledge the fullness of our involvement. We're not just the ones who received the gift. We're also the ones who didn't think we needed it and killed the One who kept trying to help us see beyond our own foolishness.

One of the biggest lessons that we all need to fully come to terms with is that God has never changed. In the Old Testament, people would bring animals or birds or grain from their fields to help atone for the mistakes they'd made. Something lost its life, shed its blood, was burned in order to pay for their errant choices. It was set up in this way so that those who had to witness something die would learn the cost of sinning against God.

There is a cost for our choices, and even though we can find ways to discount it in our minds, the cost of our sins is death. The wages of sin is death. And Christ came to be the final death for those who had sinned and lived against God. He paid our cost with His life. How dare we try to avoid our guilt by holding to this idea that we didn't cause what He went through?

It was one thing for someone to take a lamb from their flock to die for their mistakes. If they learned the lesson, great. If not, well, there were more lambs. We've been given the life of the Lamb, if we agree to miss the lesson that's meant to change our ways, our guilt is in no way lessened. It's deeper than ever before. Because God sent His Son to prove once and for all the dangerous cost in this despicable way of life we've always lived.

If we deny that, we're denying God's authority and His kindness. And do we think He's going to just be okay with that simply because we've chosen to assume He will always agree with our opinion that we're innocent and free to do as we please?

My point is that we can only go so far down this road of rampant stupidity before we either come to our senses and accept the opportunity to turn around and do better, or we can slam full speed into the immovable and immutable truth that we've all tried to believe wasn't there.

Friends, if we believe in the cross as we claim, then how can we possibly continue taking sin so lightly as to think that there's some hierarchy of transgressions upon which we can make sure our chosen mistakes are always on the lower end of severity?

Let me finish this way: Christ had to die for that one lie you told your teacher about the dog eating your homework. That's how serious sin really is. One lie deserves death. One lie. One lie is just as bad a murdering someone because both deny God's truth and the commands that it calls us to abide by in our lives. There is no grading of sin. Sin is sin, and all sin is sin because it denies God's sovereignty. And that's something that all of us are entirely guilty of doing countless times in our lives.

If we keep doing it, if we keep taking it lightly assuming He will do the same, if we live our lives with Christ on the cross to keep covering our lack of willingness to change our ways and embrace the humility He asks us to accept, then friends, we deserve exactly what He said is coming. Not because He's mean or hateful or filled with spite. But because we are. We are.

We deserve hell because we've rejected His Heaven. We either stop doing so, or we keep trying to convince ourselves that there can't possibly be any consequences. Just know that reality will not change, truth will not change, God will not change. But we will.

One way or another.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold