Some of you were once like that. But you were cleansed; you were made holy; you were made right with God by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God (1 Corinthians 6:11).
The most important thing in life, hands down, is to figure out how to be made right with God. If your life on earth comes to an end before that is taken care of, you will be separated from Him for all eternity.
That, my friend, is bad news.
What are we to do then? Well, step one is to recognize and acknowledge this separation between you and your Creator exists. But after that, then what?
Many people reach this point and conclude they must try harder, do better, buck-up and follow the rules as best they can. Ideally, at the end of their life they will have done more good than bad (or at least more good than most other people), and therefore God will welcome them into Heaven.
This is, in essence, what all religion teaches: Be a good person and you might get to go to a better place when you die. The problem with this though, is we can’t do it. We can’t become good people, at least not on our own.
Sure, you may consider yourself to be a good person, but are you perfect? Are you holy? Because the gap that exists between man and God can only be overcome if man is somehow made holy. And man, left to his own devices, can never become holy.
God knew man couldn’t clean himself up. He knew man couldn’t overcome the separation that existed between them. Yet God loves every single one of us so much He was willing to do whatever it took to remove the separation from us—even if it cost Him the life of His son.
And it did.
When you called on the name of Christ and reached out to Him to save you, Jesus made you clean. It had nothing to do with your ability to clean yourself up, follow the rules, or become a good person.
Jesus made you Holy.
Jesus made you right with God.
It was all because of Jesus.
That, my friend, is good news.
