BEYOND LAST PLACE
Good people finish last. This is a familiar saying. However, these same people will not even start their good living until it is dedicated to God's purpose and utilizing His potential (Romans 8:11). And if they don't ever really start their good lives they will end up one day - Beyond Last Place. There are many people throughout history whose life overall was a good life. Their contribution to humanity was positive and they made a great influence on the lives of others. However, these alone - being good and good works - accounts for nothing when staring in the face of living eternally with God and in His Heaven.
There is no amount of good anyone can do, for a truly all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present God, to fulfill the requirements for obtaining perfection and/or the right to enter Heaven. Nobody can live a perfect life except if God came in human form and lived out life according to His rules - perfectly. All of the Old Testament commandments, rules, and regulations were intended to show Jews and everyone else the impossibility of anyone but the Savior of the world following and fulfilling every law. Jesus followed them to the "T".
So, why did Father God send Jesus to follow and fulfill every letter of The Law for all humanity? Answer: Because Love knew we could not do either (follow/fulfill) - "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16)
Jesus loved me so much that He provided for my imperfection which included my lack of supreme goodness. - my lack of being good in essence and in deeds. This undeserved favor, this grace, is only attainable through faith. Because, without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. (Hebrews 11:6) Your eternal future is determined by how you address - So, what do you believe about Jesus Christ of Nazareth?
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
If you were to die today and stand before God and He were to ask you - "Why should I allow you into my Heaven?" - what would you say?
I encourage you - don't JUST be a good human being. Don't JUST do good for human-kind. Aim for higher purposes to your life - God's purposes - and for a time span of eternity, instead of the temporal. You do this by accepting Father God's love-gift and sacrifice, Christ Jesus, His Son into your mind and heart as your personal Master and Savior. Father God has made He who was First, Last. Later all creation will see that Father God has made also the Last, First. "So the last will be first, and the first will be last." (Matthew 20:16) Surrender your life to Christ and you will not come in Beyond Last Place!
There is no amount of good anyone can do, for a truly all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present God, to fulfill the requirements for obtaining perfection and/or the right to enter Heaven. Nobody can live a perfect life except if God came in human form and lived out life according to His rules - perfectly. All of the Old Testament commandments, rules, and regulations were intended to show Jews and everyone else the impossibility of anyone but the Savior of the world following and fulfilling every law. Jesus followed them to the "T".
So, why did Father God send Jesus to follow and fulfill every letter of The Law for all humanity? Answer: Because Love knew we could not do either (follow/fulfill) - "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16)
Jesus loved me so much that He provided for my imperfection which included my lack of supreme goodness. - my lack of being good in essence and in deeds. This undeserved favor, this grace, is only attainable through faith. Because, without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. (Hebrews 11:6) Your eternal future is determined by how you address - So, what do you believe about Jesus Christ of Nazareth?
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
If you were to die today and stand before God and He were to ask you - "Why should I allow you into my Heaven?" - what would you say?
I encourage you - don't JUST be a good human being. Don't JUST do good for human-kind. Aim for higher purposes to your life - God's purposes - and for a time span of eternity, instead of the temporal. You do this by accepting Father God's love-gift and sacrifice, Christ Jesus, His Son into your mind and heart as your personal Master and Savior. Father God has made He who was First, Last. Later all creation will see that Father God has made also the Last, First. "So the last will be first, and the first will be last." (Matthew 20:16) Surrender your life to Christ and you will not come in Beyond Last Place!
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