In a legal court, people who are still under hearing are branded “not guilty until proven guilty” because their hearing is still going on. However, there are also instances where the suspects are found at the scene of the crime and are instantly being held inside the bars because of the evidence found. For some, they still remain not guilty until proven otherwise. People say that criminals are the enemy of the law and they deserve to pay the consequences of their actions.
In our verse today, Paul talked and called all of us enemies of God. We are all of the same statuses of those lawbreakers we call criminals in the eyes of God. We all have broken His law and we all have sinned against Him greatly. This is not the latest news for us because we already know that we are lawbreakers in the eyes of God. However, we still continue to deny that we are different from those people who really murdered people, who stole, and etc. because we think that we are less sinful than them.
So, we have to understand that in the eyes of God, we are all equal. No matter if we murdered someone or we just lied, it is all the same. We still have sinned and fallen short of His glory. We have to always remember that one sin can already give a big boulder between God and us. Thus, when we talk to God and tell Him that we are nothing like those earthly lawbreakers, then we are being hypocrites. We are all criminals, one difference is that we are not caught. However, in the eyes of God, we are already caught, that is why we die for it is the wages of our sins.
We are so eager to condemn one criminal for death penalty because of the things that person did but we are so biased on our own fate. We think that we don’t deserve the same penalty because we did not do something wrong even if, on the contrary, we did. We were all sinners and we all sinned greatly against God over and over again. So it is just rightful for us to die and suffer the consequences of our actions. Again, we must remember that God is not only a loving God, but He is also holy and just. He hates sins and does not tolerate them, that is why we have to pay for the consequences.
Since one sin has broken our relationship with God, we have to understand that we are far from Him and that our relationship is lost forever. However, God remains loving and faithful to us. Nothing indeed can separate us from His love. Though sin can separate us from Him, but it is us from Him not Him from us. The moment we sinned, we walked away from God, not Him walking away from us. So, His love and grace remains there, thus no one can separate us from His love.
Now, God wants to reconcile our relationship with Him and to do that, He sent His Son to the world to save us. As the wages of sin is death, Christ has to die for us so that we will no longer die. Jesus had to suffer the wrath of the Father in our stead because He knows that we will not be able to handle it and we will surely spend our eternity in hell. So, Christ has defeated sin and death for us and by doing so, He has reconciled our broken relationship with God and has given us eternal life through His death.
Therefore, we can really see that even if we are criminals and enemies of God, we are pardoned and called not guilty because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Though we are guilty of many things, Christ has taken all of those impurities and given us new identities that are now dwelling in His righteousness. By this, we are already saved through Jesus Christ and in order to accept that gift, we only have to believe in His death and resurrection. We are indeed saved by grace through faith in our God and Savior Jesus Christ. Indeed this is the biggest and the never-outdated news, that Christ came to this world as a baby, grew up and died on the cross for all of our sins so that we will be reconciled to God through Him only.
May we always remember this truth and good news that this Christmas season has given us. We should always remember by heart that the reason for this season is Christ. Let us put in our minds that God has given us the best gift which is Jesus Christ who became our atoning sacrifice. Who became our offering so that God will pardon us and verdict us as not guilty through Him.
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