“This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.”
Failure to believe. That is why, and only why. Not because of anything else — certainly not because of the weight of guilt and sin that we enter into this world with when we are born, and certainly not because of the burden of guilt and sin that we accumulate over the course of our lifetimes. Nay, it has nothing to do with any of that at all. If we find ourselves facing the eventual prospect of death and no hope beyond death, it is only because of our failure to believe. To believe in the plan of redemption that has been made freely available to all through the sacrifice of the one who knew no sin but was made to bear the sin of the world so that the price for redemption might be acceptable to the omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent God Almighty; and whereby the act of belief and acceptance in this gift signals a contrite spirit of confession that recognizes that one cannot save oneself with acts of righteousness, but that salvation lies in the acceptance of the grace of God. Where do stand on this matter, gentle reader?
