Life in the Balance Part 2

In the post we discussed the issue of whether anything we do (or think or say) can possibly make us worthy of God’s favor or can possibly make us desirable in his sight. Using the image of the balance scale, we saw that on one side are our evil deeds, infinitely evil because they are committed against a Holy God. On the other side are our good deeds, which God expects and so cannot count as a positive weight to balance out the evil ones. Therefore, we have no way to relieve the condemnation earned by our sins.

It is interesting that the Bible never uses this balance illustration. The reason for this is that the Bible teaches that all men are condemned, not because of individual sins, but because we are born under the leadership of Adam — the original sinner. We are, therefore, sinners by nature. To use the balance illustration makes no sense in the Biblical scheme because evil deeds spring from evil hearts; not the other way around.

What this means, practically, is that all a person needs, to begin sinning, is the opportunity and the ability. We observe this in every culture and in every age. People are born rebels. We don’t need to teach small children to lie, to hit, or to be selfish, for example. They come that way. We don’t need to teach teenagers to rebel against their parents or college students to drink. Left to themselves with no moral teaching or supervision, people will be as bad as they think they can get away with.

With all this being the case, the Bible teaches that the wages of sin is death – eternity in Hell. This existence or life in Hell does not begin at physical death; it begins at birth and gets worse as we grow older. There is nothing we can do to change this situation. We didn’t start it and we didn’t earn it (though we show by our lifestyles that we concur with our lot).

The system is God’s. He made the universe to be the way it is both in the downside and in the upside. The downside, as we have been talking about, is that mankind is condemned to an eternal life separated from our Creator. The up side is that he has provided a way out of this terrible dilemma. The Bible calls this good news –The Gospel.

At this point I’ll just let the Bible speak for itself:

• For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6:23).
• For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! (Romans 5:8–10)
• As the Scripture says, "Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame." (Romans 10:11)
• Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent [change your mind from thinking that you are the center of the universe to acknowledging that God is God], because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead. (Acts 17:30–31)

I hope this helps,

Pastor Lawyer