"Put Everything On the Table"

Ask anybody on the street this question: “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?”  According to the old joke, the answer is: “Practice, practice, practice”.   

Then ask them: “How do you succeed in life?”  I believe that most Americans will answer: “Dream big, and work hard.”  It’s like the way to get to Carnegie Hall – success depends on the things you do.

Then, ask them another question: “How do you get to Heaven?”  I believe that most people will answer with something along the lines of: “Be a good person”, and/or, “Do good deeds”.  Of course, this would then lead you to ask: “How good do you have to be?  How many of the 10 Commandments do you have to keep in order to pass the test?  Is six enough?  Eight?  Do you have to be as good as The Pope?  How do you measure that?  How many good deeds do you have to do?  How will you know when you’ve done enough?  What if all it takes to keep you out of Heaven is one sin?  Can any amount of being good or doing good deeds make up for that one sin?”  [Lawyers love follow-up questions!]  Of course, there are no answers to these questions, which means most people have no idea of how to get to Heaven.

But Jesus turns all this upside down: “Happy are the poor in spirit.  Happy are the people who understand that, when it comes down to making a deal with God to get into Heaven, they bring nothing to ‘God’s Negotiating Table’.  Happy are the people who realize that all their goodness and good deeds and rule-keeping, all their very best, gets them no closer to God.  They can be happy because The Kingdom of Heaven [both right now AND throughout eternity] IS theirs.” 

How can this be?  This hardly seems fair. 

Congratulations!  You are right!  Nothing about it is fair.  “For God took the sinless Christ and poured into Him our sins.  Then, in exchange, He poured God’s goodness into us!” (2 Corinthians 5:21.) 

I thought an “exchange”, or a deal or a contract was supposed to require each side to give something of more-or-less equal value to the other side.  This looks like God put everything on the table, and we put nothing on the table, and yet we get the amazing prize. 

That’s true.  But it’s even better than that.  God is willing to make that exchange because of one reason – He loves us!  He loves us more than we can ever understand.  He loves us so much that the thought of spending eternity without us is more than He can stand.  So He paid the price to make sure we would be with Him, and be happy with Him, and share in His incomparable riches, both now and throughout eternity.  This is good news!

The real question for us is this: “How will we respond to such love?”    

Abrose Ramset | Pastor and Shepherd | Throwback blog from October 2018