by Joseph Gorman

Do you feel like you have fallen short this week, or today, or even in the past five minutes? If you are like me, the sin in your life makes it seem like God is so far away. How could the perfect and holy God love people who yell at their kids, or steal from work, or don’t read the Bible every day, or are addicted to porn, or lie to their parents, or gossip about that other mom at school, or don’t memorize scripture like they used to, or argue with their spouse all the time, or drink too much, or cheated on a test at school, or skipped church last week, or.…. As you can imagine, this list could go on for a while.

Truth be told, we’re all “bad” Christians; none of us are perfect. Paul levels the playing field when he tells us that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We all stumble, but we are saints because we are saved by the blood of Christ. “For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.” (Hebrews 10:14)

As believers, our eternity is perfectly secured by Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and the Holy Spirit is currently working in us to make us more like Christ. What great news! We are not perfect, we could never be perfect, but Jesus was, and is, and will be perfect for us. No matter how much we sin, our Father only sees righteousness through Jesus’ sacrifice when he looks at us.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you,”
– 1 Peter 1:3-4

My encouragement to you is that God is not repulsed by your sin, he doesn’t want to leave you, and he doesn’t expect you to do better on your own. I will leave you with the passage that I rely on when Satan tries to convince me that I’m a bad Christian.

“His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.”
– 2 Peter 1:3-4