If you’ve ever told a lie, stolen something, lusted in your heart after another who wasn’t your spouse, or spoken the Lord’s name in vain; then you are a liar, thief, adulterer, and a blasphemer. That makes you a sinner.
The fact that you may have done any of those things only once in your life doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because the transgressions broke the perfect Law; that Law being God’s Law—the Ten Commandments.
This Law is the governing principle of life itself, and its perfection demands that it can never be broken. Perfect obedience to it is required in order to have eternal life.
Otherwise, when broken, its perfection requires justice. Such justice requires the opposite of life—meaning death. The Law in its perfection can be no other way.
I’m writing this after being reminded of a conversation I had with a taxi driver years ago. I was a baby Christian then, and exited his cab and our conversation feeling inadequate. The conversation had been about righteousness gaining one’s entrance into heaven.
All I knew at the time, and conveyed, was that one had to be covered in Jesus’ righteousness for entrance. This didn’t sit well with the driver who knew of a saintly woman (in his mind) who could do no wrong and who had never done anything wrong. Her actions were always out of concern for others.
The driver insisted that God would surely let someone like her into heaven, even though she wasn’t a Christian. I couldn’t convince him otherwise.
I didn’t know then that self-generated acts of goodness are motivated from a selfish, sinful nature; a nature that can long to be good, but remains sinful. I didn’t know that God had let it be known in His word that because of the sin nature we’re all born into (Psalm 51: 5), all our self-righteous acts are but dirty, filthy rags in His sight (Isaiah 64: 6). I didn’t know to tell the driver that God has said that all have sinned and fallen short of His glory (character). Romans 3: 23.
What I’d like for you, a seeker, to understand is that Jesus’ righteousness is one-hundred percent pure. It is motivated by a spotless, godly nature. It is the only righteousness allowed in heaven. And such a selfless righteousness is it, that it motivated Jesus to leave heaven and come to earth to redeem mankind.
That required Him to wear or assume humanity’s sinful flesh, for condemned flesh is what He came to die for. (Click here for more on the God/man’s two natures.) In our flesh, He never yielded to the sinful desires of the flesh, not even by a thought. In this way, He is the only one to ever satisfy the perfect requirement of the Law that none of its laws ever be broken.
He also was the only one to satisfy the justice of the Law. This was accomplished by Him being made to be the sin-bearer for all of humanity, for all time. Being made sin for us, He took our condemned place and died for us.
Seeker, please do not be mistaken. All of humanity is born with a selfish, sinful nature. Therefore, we all have sinned. In the eyes of the perfect Law, even if you sinned only one time in your life, that still makes you a sinner.
Jesus is the Savior of the world. He came to save us from sin. Believe in Him and confess Him as your Savior. If you do that, your sinful nature and sinful act(s) will be lifted from you and placed on Him.
In exchange, His righteousness will cover you and be counted as yours. At that point, you will be born again (spiritually). Only this time, you’re born with a clean slate, with a passport to heaven.