Continuing on my quest to memorize 100 verses recommended by Robert J. Morgan in his book, 100 Bible Verses Everyone Should Know by Heart, I'm now working on what is referred to as the Roman Road, a set of verses that provides a framework for sharing the Good News.
This simple verse pretty much sums up our need for receiving Jesus as our Savior. There's no getting around the phrase, "for ALL have sinned". No matter how nice and kind and generous and compassionate we are, we are all sinners.
This concept, I don't think, is too difficult to accept. Sure, I easily acknowledge that I will never be perfect like God who is the essence of purity and holiness. And when I have had conversations with others about this, they agree that they're sinners too. After all, it's impossible to be perfect.
And so many people want to have a comfortable agreement with God that living a "good" life will be "good enough" to spend eternity in the Kingdom. But the cold, hard truth is that it's not good enough.
But verse 24 gives us some much needed hope. It says, "and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus".
Translation: We are marked for good and made legitimate for free, at no cost to us, other than our belief that the debt Jesus paid on the cross was sufficient to set us right before God.
This is the part that messes with people's heads, I think, because how can just believing this message be what God wants from us? How does that take all the wrongs in my life and make them forgiven? Having faith in Jesus can't be enough, can it?
It is.
Over and over again in the New Testament we are instructed that faith in Jesus is all that is required to be washed clean of the sin that has accrued in our hearts and minds.
This is what makes the Good News, so very wonderfully good enough.
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