The love, grace, and mercy of God is astounding. Many people think that if they just clean themselves up enough, if they are just good enough, then God will accept them. They won’t come to God because they haven’t become good enough yet. They haven’t “cleaned up their act” just yet.
Yet this demonstrates, once again, the difference between the way God thinks and the way man thinks. Man would say that we need to earn our way to God. God says that even though you were his enemy, he would come to die for you so that you would be saved.
You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!
Romans 5:6-10
Paul clearly points out the difference between man’s thought process and God’s thought process. Men might give themselves for others in only some specific and outstanding circumstances. Not for a righteous person and only possibly for a “good” person. But God came to give himself while we were still sinners. While we were his enemies, God gave himself.
Imagine this: Someone is against you. Someone opposes you. In word, in deed, and in every way. This person is against you. What would you want to do? What would I want to do? We would want that person discredited. Put down. Destroyed.
What did God do? In this very same situation, because each of us were against God, opposed God, and did everything contrary to what God commanded or desired, we showed ourselves to be against God. And yet in that very same situation, instead of destroying us, God gave himself for us. God himself, in the person of Jesus Christ, came to give himself. While we were opposed to him, while we were opposed to God, God himself paid the penalty that was required. He paid with his own blood the price of the rebellion. He paid for our sins through the death of Jesus on the cross.
How incredible of a love is that? While we were his enemies, God gave himself for us. When we truly understand that, what else can we do other than to give our entire lives back to him?