What Matters Most
Will it matter to Him what kind of cars I owned or what kind of house I possessed? How about the color of my skin or what language I speak? Will it make a difference to Him that I went to church and sat in the pew at every opportunity or that I was the best tither? Could the denomination I belonged to give me points?Maybe my salary and how much I had in my bank account. Will it make a difference to Him that I am good looking or built well and in great health?
You get the point. I believe that God's Word teaches us that God loves us all. It says that He loved us before we were born. Hold on; if He loved us before we were even born, then His love cannot be based on what we do in our life. Does God lose the love He had for us from the beginning of creation? I don't believe so. John 3:16 says that God 'So' loved the world. The greek word that was translated from the Received Text is οὕτω which means basically, in this way (referring to what precedes or follows). What follows is God's love for the world. The greek word for world here is κόσμος which means orderly arrangement that is decoration; by implication the world (in a wide or narrow sense including its inhabitants literally or figuratively. The word loved was translated from the greek word ἀγαπάω which means unconditional love. You see God showed His love for mankind by coming to earth in a body through a woman but conceived not by a man but by His Spirit. This last Adam, Paul calls Him in 1 Corinthians, was the Lord from heaven. He was not like the first Adam who was earthly and from the ground. God became flesh so that He would be able to die and pay the penalty that was earned by the first Adam in the garden. Only someone who had not committed a sin could become a sacrifice for those that had. Much like the law of Moses commanded that each person should take a perfect lamb without blemish to atone for their sins. The law, however, was not perfect because the bible says that the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away the sins of the people. How can an animal pay for the wrongs that we have committed against God?
God loves you so much that He gave His only begotten Son (God in the flesh) so that He could restore the WAY to the TREE OF LIFE that He had to remove man from in the garden to prevent death and corruption from lasting forever. In order to stop the death and destruction we see in the world man had to die because that is how death and destruction entered the world, through man's disobedience. Wickedness and corruption must run it's course while God offers all of us Grace and Mercy so that those who will choose to repent from their own ways and follow Him (Jesus), by their own free will decision can be saved from the ultimate punishment for sin.
So you see, God loves you and died for you as Jesus just as you are. It is not based on what you have done be it good or bad. When we stand before Him in heaven all that will matter is whether we have a relationship with Him.
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