When We Like the Aroma of Christianity, but Don’t Want to Drink It
We often approach Christianity like coffee: we enjoy the aroma, but refuse to drink. When we do drink, we add stuff to cover the true taste.
This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
God desires all be saved (2 Pet 3:9), but we broke that relationship, causing separation between man and God (Gen 3:1-24; Isa 59:2).
Our human nature is bound by sin so that we are blinded by it and we do its bidding.
Because of our sin, we deserve punishment, are under divine condemnation, and are enemies of God.
For the wages of sin is death, . . .
Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
Many try to do good works, but even our good deeds are good enough (Isa 64:6). Only those who are absolutely perfect can enter heaven (Ps 24:3-4), and none of us meet that standard (Rom 3:10-23).
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
The only way to get to heaven is through Jesus Christ. The good news is that this gift is for all those who will receive it.
This gift is given freely out of God’s love and grace.
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.
. . . but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
You must repent of your sins. This means turning away from them and asking God to forgive you.
Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago.
You must believe Jesus is God the Son who paid for your sins. You must also confess that he rose from the dead.
because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him froTherefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.m the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.
Through prayer, ask Jesus to forgive you and put your faith in him alone for your salvation.
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
