Infected (Book 2): The Flight (21 page)

That being said, if I carefully examine myself, I cannot honestly say that I am a good person.  I strive to do good, but it is a struggle.  There is a constant battle within myself between doing good and evil.  If this battle exists, then there must be something other than good within me.  If I were truly good, there would be no struggle.   

When I do something that people say is good, it is never for purely altruistic reasons.  There is always an underlying motivation that I will benefit from the good deed in one way or another, either in this life, or as a reward from God in heaven.  God is all knowing and understands our thoughts and motivations.  In the book of Psalms, King David wrote:

O 
Lord
, You have searched me and known me.  You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off. (
Psalm 139:1,2) 

In Ecclesiastes, King Solomon wrote:

For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil.
(Ecclesiastes 12:14)

God doesn’t just judge our actions; He judges our thoughts and motivations.  Seemingly good works performed with selfish motivations become sinful before God.

Further evidence that mankind is not good can be seen by turning on the television.  The news is full of reports of all kinds of evil taking place in the world.  In America, we receive daily reports of murder, rape, robbery, and corruption.  Around the world, we hear of terrorism, wars, genocide and the like.  These are not the reports one would expect to hear from “good” people. These are the reports of people who are ruled by sinful desires.

Beginning in Genesis, the first book of the Bible, we see the results of sin.  When God created Adam and Eve, He set them in the midst of the Garden of Eden.  They lived in paradise and had daily fellowship with God.  As long as they obeyed the one rule He had given them, not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would continue to dwell in this utopia God created for them.  However, with the rule, a warning was given: if they disobeyed, death would follow. 

Eventually, Adam and Eve disobeyed God and partook in the forbidden fruit.  With this first sin came consequences.  They were cast out of the Garden of Eden; their relationship with God was fractured, and the work associated with survival became laborious as a curse was placed on the creation:

To the woman He said: “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; In pain you shall bring forth children; Your desire shall be for your husband, And he shall rule over you.” 

Then to Adam He said, “Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’:“Cursed is the ground for your sake; In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life.  Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. 
 
In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.”
(Genesis 3:16-19)

Along with the curse on creation came the real punishment for sin: death.

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (
Romans 6:23)

This verse has bad news and good news.  In order to fully appreciate the good news, we need to first understand the bad news, so we will start there.

Sinning is like working at a job.  A person earns wages for it, and according to the Bible, the wage for sin is death.  Unlike the job a person goes to every day to earn a living, with sin he is awarded his full wages upon the completion of his first sinful act.

We think of death as the end of our life.  In the Bible, death is a bit more complex than that and is three faceted.  It does include physical death, but it also includes spiritual death, or broken fellowship with God. 

Prior to Adam and Eve disobeying God, they enjoyed being in the presence of God.  He would take on physical form and come into their presence and commune with them. 

And they heard the sound of the 
Lord
 God walking in the garden in the cool of the day…
(Genesis 3:8)

After they sinned, this fellowship was broken.  God is holy, or sinless, and His nature will not allow sin in His presence.

The third aspect of the death a person earns as a wage for sin is eternal death, or eternal punishment in hell. 

But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death. (
Revelation 21:8)

Someone may say God must be unloving to issue such a harsh judgment.  When we look at the second half of Romans 6:23 and see the provision God has made we can see that God truly is loving.

The fact is, we don’t understand how offensive our sin is to God.  Nobody criticizes a judge for sending a vile criminal to prison for life, and few would argue with that person being put to death.  On the contrary, when a person perceived to be guilty of a crime is allowed to go unpunished, the judge is said to be unjust.  We insist that crime be punished in our society and God insists that sin be punished.  He is the one who created the universe, He is the one who created mankind, and He is the one who makes the rules.

The good news is that God has not left us to wallow in the mire of a hopeless situation that ends in eternal damnation.  He has provided a means to escape the just judgment we have earned as the wages for our sin.

In stark contrast to the grim future we face, God offers the gift of forgiveness for our transgressions against Him.  This does not mean our sins go unpunished.  Leaving sin unpunished would be contrary to God’s justice.  His very nature demands that sin must be punished.

In order to satisfy His nature of justice, and at the same time satisfy His nature of love, God offered the ultimate sacrifice.  Leaving His throne in heaven, God took on human form and was born a baby.  This baby, Jesus, was different from the rest of humanity in that he led a sinless life. 

For the first time in human history, a completely righteous person walked the face of the earth.  Unlike the rest of world, He was free from the penalty of judgment.  His freedom from sin enabled Jesus to do something nobody else could have done.  He willingly offered himself as payment for the sin debt of the world.  He allowed himself to be killed in order to satisfy the judgment of death that had been decreed upon all men for their sin.

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
(Romans 5:8)

The amazing thing about Jesus dying in our place is that sinners are the enemy of God as evidenced in the passage from which the previous excerpt was taken:

For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life
.
(Romans 5:10) 

This is a demonstration of the purest love that exists.  Short of my family, there is nobody I would willingly trade for their sentence of death, not even my closest friends.  Yet, God did this for his enemies in order to reconcile the relationship with them. 

Without getting into a long theological discourse, God exists as a triune being.  In short, this means that there is one God but He exists as three distinct persons or parts.  Although it may be an overly simplistic example, an egg is similar.  It consists of three distinct parts: the shell, the white, and the yolk, yet it is still one egg.  God exists as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Each is distinct from the others and each plays different roles, but they still exist as one Being, if such a word can be used to describe God. 

This becomes important in light of a statement Jesus made while hanging on the cross:

And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46)

In paying for the sins of the world, Jesus took upon Himself every sin committed by every person who has lived and every person who will live as well as the consequence for that sin.

For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
(
2 Corinthians 5:21)

In those hours Jesus was on the cross, God’s wrath was poured out on Him, the same wrath that should have been poured out on me and on you and on everybody else that has sinned or will sin.  For the first time in eternity, two parts of the triune God, the Father and the Holy Spirit, cut themselves off from the Son.  Not only was Jesus, the Son, suffering an excruciating death for the sins of the world, He was forsaken and cut off from part of Himself.

Considering the lengths God went to in order to redeem sinners to Himself, I don’t believe anyone can make a reasonable argument against God’s loving nature.

In order to satisfy the penalty of death on sin that God’s justice demanded, God sacrificed the Son in place of sinners.  Jesus bore the penalty for our sin.

Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed.  (1 Peter 2:24)

God’s provision for sin is available to every person in the world, but just like winning a raffle, holding the winning ticket isn’t enough.  The gift must be accepted.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life
.
(John 3:16)

The key is “whoever believes in Him.”  Faith is the means by which we accept the redemptive gift being offered to us. 

 
But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.  (Hebrews 11:6)

The only way a person can have his sin debt forgiven is through faith.  It is not something we can earn.  Our best efforts do not produce anything that is pleasing to God.  Even if we could perform a work that was truly good, it would be tainted in His sight by the stench of sin that permeates our lives.  It isn’t a matter of doing more good than bad.  If it were possible for a person to only commit a single sin during his life, that one sin would make him guilty and bring him under the punishment of death.  Forgiveness from our sin is an unmerited gift from God.  There is nothing we can do to earn it.

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. (Ephesians 2:8,9)

Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit
.
(Titus 3:5)

The forgiveness of our sins goes much further than simply relieving a person of spending eternity in hell.  Part of the curse associated with the original act of sin by Adam in the Garden of Eden was physical death.  That does not go away with the forgiveness of sin; however, those who accept the
“
gift” receive “eternal life” as promised in the previously quoted scripture, John 3:16.  The spirit of each person who believes will be resurrected upon physical death and that person will be given a new body and welcomed into heaven, where he will spend eternity.  Before His death, Jesus said the following to His disciples:

Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.  (John 14:1-4)

The hope for the resurrection to eternal life in heaven for those who believe and have accepted God’s gift is given credence by God resurrecting Jesus following His death on the cross.

Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption.  Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed— in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.  For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”

“O Death, where is your sting?
O Hades, where is your victory?”

 The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law.  But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 15:50-57)

There are many religions in the world, and each claims a unique path to God.  The question that many people ask is, “Can I come to God through any of those means?”  The answer comes from Jesus himself:

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” (John 14:6)

Jesus also said the following: