“Do you not know that the wicked will not
inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be
deceived: Neither the sexually immoral
nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor
thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit
the kingdom of God. And that is what
some of you were. But you were washed,
you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ
and by the Spirit of our God.” (1 Corinthians 6:9-11)
I don’t know what kind of past all of you
have had, but there aren’t very many of us who don’t have some sordid stories
to tell about the things we’ve done. You
can charge some of it off to youthful passions.
You can charge some of it off to immature foolishness. But you still have to charge all of it to
human sinfulness -- our sinfulness. None
of us can say that we have escaped it.
No one does! (See Romans 3:23 if
you want to argue with me!)
And that’s the way God found us -- sinful,
broken, guilty. What we deserved was
punishment and death. What we got was
grace and mercy and salvation! He took
the guilt of our sin and put it on the account of Jesus. Then He took the righteousness of His perfect
Son, Jesus, and put it on our account!
What a deal! What love! What grace!
And everyone of us who has come to Christ has experienced it. All of us came from the same place and came
in the same way -- from sin to God by grace.
But though God found us in the guilt of our
sin, He is not content to leave us there.
All who come to Christ have been implanted with the Holy Spirit. One of the Holy Spirit’s works is
transformation. So everyone who comes to
Christ gets transformed. Not
overnight. Not without a great deal of
pain and discomfort. Not completely in
this world. But transformation does
happen, just look back at your life and you can see it.
God will take you just like you are – it’s
the only way you can come to Him. But He
won’t leave you that way! That’s His
promise!
His, by Grace,
Steve
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