Never Good Enough

"For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins." -Hebrews 10:4

The entire message of the Old Testament is this--Man blows everything up. That is really it.

God spends book after book, man after man, generation after generation, year after year showing anyone who will read this book that man's sin wrecks everything. The Israelites worship everything but God most of the time and the leaders of the Israelites fall in every single way imaginable. They, like us, are failures.

Romans says "all have sinned and fallen short of God's glory." That is a nice way of saying we fail God. All the time.

The story of the Old Testament is the story of God and the story of the Law that God passed down to man. The Law that God passed to man are God's rules, God's commands for His people to live by. But man cannot follow the Law. The Law, in the end, exists to show man how far he is from God and how much He fails God. We fail the Law because our morality and our good works cannot get us to God, the sacrifices of bulls and goats do not please God.

Enter the Gospel. God's sacrifice for us, on our behalf. It is all God. Not us. We don't do anything. God does it all. All of it. God saves, not us...we can't save ourselves. Only God can save. And only He does. So we can now rest in that and quit trying to earn our way to God. We can't do it. The Old Testament screams that.

But today we still try and offer sacrifices to God, maybe not bulls and goats in Dallas, TX, but replace bulls and goats with relationships, work, vocation, family, morality...insert any of those there. We think (I can think) that if sacrifice enough in our relationships or if we work hard enough at work or if we are morally righteous then God will accept us and loves us and even bless us. How good is good enough? No such thing. Old Testament. Read it. Man is evil and wrecks everything on his own.

Jesus came to deliver us from our condemnation under the law. The law only shows us how guilty we really are and reminds us how guilty we are, but Jesus came to set us free from that and make us quit sacrificing to please Him and start resting in His sacrifice for us.

You will never be good enough for God. No matter what you do. But through Jesus Christ, God has accepted you and freed you from living a works-based religion. What the law could never do Christ did. The Old Testament paves the way for the New Testament and for the Gospel...for Jesus to set us free from having to be good enough.

Romans 8:1-4
"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. 3For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, 4in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit."


R.D.