So Salvation is a token of God's love. All we have to do is
to accept His love through Christ's Sacrifice. If we are
really honest with ourselves, then we know in our hearts
that our very best is never going to be good enough. We
cannot save ourselves, from ourselves and our personal sins,
no matter how hard we try. We are imperfect in the flesh and
always will be, simply because we are humans born with a
sinful nature. We already know how to do wrong and evil from
a young age, but we must learn to do good. As it is also
written:

"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of
yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any
man should boast."
Ephesians 2:8-9, KJV

"Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but
according to his mercy he saved us . . ."
Titus 3:5a, KJV

Before his conversion to the Christian faith, the Apostle
Paul, then known as Saul, was a very zealous, self-righteous
Jewish Pharisee who did his best to uphold the Mosaic Law.
He was probably very confident that his own so-called
goodness and dutiful keeping of the Mosaic Law made him a
prime candidate for Heaven; at least until that fateful day
on the road to Damascus when he had his dreadful encounter
with the risen Jesus Christ! The Lord greatly humbled Paul,
and opened his spiritual eyes, so that he could finally see
the truth regarding his miserable, sinful condition. It was
after that, that we find Paul writing such things as the
following:

"O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the
body of this death?"
Romans 7:24, KJV

"For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be
called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God."
1 Corinthians 15:9, KJV

What a change of attitude after God had time to deal with
Saul's pride! Sadly, there are a lot of Sauls in the world
today. Such people tend to possess a lot of self-confidence.
They have inflated egos and high opinions of themselves.
Quite often they will look down upon others who they feel do
not meet their standards and expectations. Those people who
are religiously zealous, sometimes have a tendency to think
that they are a little better, perhaps a little more holy,
and just a bit more righteous than others. This is not the
real righteousness which comes from God; but rather, it is
self-righteousness; and the Bible does not speak well of it.
For example, the Prophet Isaiah wrote:

"But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our
righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a
leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us
away."
Isaiah 64:6, KJV

King Solomon likewise offered some wise advice regarding
those people who have such high opinions of themselves, and
who are filled with their own false sense of righteousness.
In the Proverbs he wrote:

"Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit
before a fall."
Proverbs 16:18, KJV

Please take a moment now to consider your own life. If you
can be honest with yourself, whether you are young or old,
you know in your heart that you have not always led an
exemplary life. Perhaps you have lied in order to cover for
yourself; perhaps you have said cruel things which have hurt
others; or perhaps you have stolen something which did not
belong to you. You have undoubtedly done certain things of
which you are ashamed, which would embarrass you if they
ever came to light. In short, you have not fully lived
according to God's Laws of Love, which Jesus emphasized in
the following verses:

". . . The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel;
The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with
all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first
commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt
love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other
commandment greater than these."
Mark 12:29b-31, KJV

What you need to understand, is that while we can hide our
misdeeds from our friends and family, we cannot hide them
from God. He sees all, and He knows all; and He certainly
knows the evil thoughts that dwell in our hearts. That is
why He inspired the Prophet Jeremiah to write the following:

"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately
wicked: who can know it?"
Jeremiah 17:9, KJV

In fact, way back in the very first book of the Bible,
shortly before the Great Flood had occurred, God observed
the evil nature of man; and He was sorry that He had ever
created him. Thus, He chose to destroy man, because that was
the only way to purge the Earth of man's iniquity. In the
book of Genesis we read:

"And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the
earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his
heart was only evil continually. And it repented the LORD
that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his
heart. And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have
created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and
the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it
repenteth me that I have made them."
Genesis 6:5-7, KJV

Shortly after the Great Flood had occurred, God again
confirmed the evil nature of man's heart when He said to
Himself:

". . . I will not again curse the ground any more for manŐs
sake; for the imagination of manŐs heart is evil from his
youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing
living, as I have done."
Genesis 8:21, KJV

The Prophet Isaiah was also keenly aware of our fallen,
sinful condition, and our need for a Savior. That is why in
one of his prophecies regarding the coming sufferings of
Christ, he too wrote:

"All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every
one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the
iniquity of us all."
Isaiah 53:6, KJV

King David of old likewise recognized the fallen state of
rebellious men. In his fourteenth Psalm he writes:

". . . The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They
are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none
that doeth good. The LORD looked down from heaven upon the
children of men, to see if there were any that did
understand, and seek God. They are all gone aside, they are
all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good,
no, not one."
Psalms 14:1-3, KJV

Turning to the New Testament, on one particular occasion,
Jesus and His followers were self-righteously judged by the
Scribes and the Pharisees, because they failed to wash their
hands before eating. Exactly how did Jesus respond to their
ridiculous accusations? Consider the following:

"Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at
the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the
draught? But those things which proceed out of the mouth
come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out
of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries,
fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: These are
the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen
hands defileth not a man."
Matthew 15:17-20, KJV

A number of years after his own conversion to the Christian
faith, the Apostle Paul paraphrased parts of King David's
fourteenth Psalm when he wrote the following in his letter
to the Roman brethren:

"As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:"
Romans 3:10, KJV

"For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;"
Romans 3:23, KJV

Over and over again, in both the Old and the New Testaments,
we are reminded that we are sinners. We are told that evil
lurks in our hearts, and that we are fallen creatures. It
should be obvious then, that it is utterly useless for us to
try to hide our sins from God. As the old saying goes, "Be
sure that your sins will find you out". Jesus Himself said
regarding the hypocritical religious leaders of His day:

"For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed;
neither hid, that shall not be known."
Luke 12:2, KJV

"If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had
sin: but now they have no cloke for their sin."
John 15:22, KJV


Jeff Snyder, SysOp - Armageddon BBS  Visit us at endtimeprophecy.org port 23
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