A question you might be asked as Christian is an emotional appeal of “do you think I am a bad person?”. The person who knows you are a Christian is probing you by an emotional appeal with a loaded question. What they really are asking “do you think I am going to hell?”. How do you respond?

There is only one correct way to approach this question, and this Scripture’s way. Romans 3:10-19 clearly says in not so nice language that we are ALL condemned, we are ALL sinners according to Romans 5:12 and Romans 3:23. So if ALL have sinned, all are guilty of sin including you.

So the emotional appeal of “do you think I am a bad person?” has a Scriptural approach, “yes, but we ALL are bad people in the light of a holy eternal God”. In the context of a false comparison of which I wrote about last month, you might not be as bad when compared to next worse off sinner in mankind’s eyes, but in God’s eyes, we all stand condemned.

But you might be thinking, “that’s unfair”. It is only unfair if you don’t really believe in God or don’t really understand who He is or what absolute perfection is. Fair would mean God automatically extinguishes His creation upon every sin committed and sends that soul to eternal torment. You don’t want “fair” from our standpoint, you should want MERCY! That’s if you know what God has said in His word. You see? We deserve His justice, we don’t deserve His mercy.

So if it is impossible to be “good” in God’s eyes based on sin, who can be saved? The answer is God is also love in that He provided a remedy upon the first sin committed on this earth. The wages of our sin is death, but the free gift of eternal life was promised through His Son Jesus Christ. So by His mercy, He provided a substitute for your penalty of sin, His name is Jesus Christ!

The remedy is so simple, so clear, not confusing, yet mankind by their world religions have attempted to make is a complex mess in order for their followers to become dependent on them, instead of Jesus. The way to salvation is to place your ENTIRE faith alone in Jesus, that He alone was your sin debt payer and you are saved! That by His death He conquered your sin and by His rising from the dead it was your indication that you too shall rise, in other words the gift of eternal life.

Do you belong to a church which continues to teach “you are a good person” or “be your best you”?? And all you need to do is “do better”, and in the end that should tip the scale of justice in your favor? That my friend is Satan’s distortion, a false gospel, which ends in eternal torment. Why you may ask? Because you dismissed the ONLY debt payer, Jesus Christ, and sought to be saved by your lonesome.

I heard this as an analogy. It is like God demanding that you physically jump to the moon in order for sins to be paid. You join a health club or gym who has all sorts of ideas on how to jump high. They prescribe various vitamins, give you special shoes and special exercises the gym’s trainers contrived. After some time you are jumping higher than many of your classmates, but your vertical height doesn’t even come close to reaching the ceiling in the building. So you tricked your mind into thinking, I am jumping higher than everyone here, so God might just accept that, but He doesn’t!

The demand is to jump to the moon! There is no possible way, but you continue to trick your mind and your religion helps you do so. And in the fine print in this analogy, God put on a sign in the gym in clear and definite words “Stop rejecting Me, Jesus jumped to the moon on your behalf, so to be forgiven, you must believe in Him as your substitute”. Yet you can’t bring yourself to believe that, so you continue to try to jump higher? Your friends and family are part of the gym (church) so they all are training as well, “so this way can’t be wrong, one day I will jump to the moon” as you tricked your mind and believed the gym to reject the promise of God through Jesus.

This my friend is the analogy of what many are doing by their world religions, as they try to coach you to do something frankly NO ONE can do, that is to save yourself, as they say “do this, don’t do that, take this, believe us”, while again you cannot even reach the ceiling in the gym despite all your efforts. Your pride won’t allow you to believe in that substitute Jesus, and your world religion is making sure of it!

Place your faith alone in that substitute, Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved. The sign post is clear! God didn’t mince His words.