In this episode, I share more about how this truth has played out in my own life — and the steps you can take to make it real in yours.
God is Not Waiting for You to be “Good Enough”
👉🏻 Jesus – the Son of God – being born into human history is THE ultimate proof of that.
To understand why that’s true, we need to lay out a few facts.
1️⃣ Firstly, the Bible clearly tells us that no one is “good enough.”
For example, Romans 3:23 (NLT) makes this clear: “For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.”
The Passion Translation says it this way: “For we all have sinned and are in need of the glory of God.”
Since the Fall back in the Garden of Eden, when sin entered the world due to both Adam and Eve, every human is born sinful.
We are born naturally bent towards sin and away from God.
2️⃣ Secondly, the Bible clearly tells us that our own efforts cannot change this state.
As sinners, we cannot dwell with a holy God.
God is holy, meaning He is 100% without any evil – including sin.
Because God is holy – and because He is love (as 1 John 4:8 tells us) – he naturally hates sin. As any good Father does.
Sin corrupts, damages, steals, kills, and destroys. Any good, loving Father is going to naturally hate something that does that to His kids.
Yet due to sin, there is a rift between us and God. And we – as humans – are not capable of bridging it.
No amount of checklists, or good works, or good intentions, or self-help books is going to change that.
We simply aren’t capable of becoming “good enough.” Or as Romans 3:23 (NLT) says, “God’s glorious standard.”
And the Bible clearly states this.
For example, Ephesians 2:8-9 (NLT) says, “God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.” [Emphasis mine.]
There’s also Galatians 2:15-16 (MSG) which says, “We Jews know that we have no advantage of birth over ‘non-Jewish sinners.’ We know very well that we are not set right with God by rule-keeping but only through personal faith in Jesus Christ. How do we know? We tried it—and we had the best system of rules the world has ever seen! Convinced that no human being can please God by self-improvement, we believed in Jesus as the Messiah so that we might be set right before God by trusting in the Messiah, not by trying to be good.” [Emphasis mine.]
✝️ Now, this may seem like a hopeless picture. But it’s not – because of Jesus.
John 3:16-17 (MSG) says this: “This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.”
💗 God the Father sent Jesus to be born into human history to fix what we cannot.
At Easter, we celebrate Jesus’s death and resurrection.
We celebrate that Jesus died in our place, for our sins (past, present, and future) on the cross, taking upon Himself God’s holy wrath that was meant for us as sinners.
Thus, by accepting this gift from God and acknowledging Jesus as one’s Lord and Savior, we are set right with God. Because God sees us through Jesus’ sacrifice.
Psalm 103:12 (NLT) assures us that, “He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west.”
Jesus is what makes us right (or “good enough”) in God’s eyes.
And so at Christmas, we celebrate His birth into human history.
From John Chapter 1, we know that Jesus was present with God the Father during creation.
And yet Jesus willingly left His place by God’s side and entered into His own creation for our sake.
Stop and think about that for a moment, friend. It’s kinda crazy.
That’s like you painting a picture, or creating a drawing, and choosing to enter into your creation like a version of the movie Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
And yet that’s what Jesus did. He walked this earth as both fully human and fully divine, and made THE only way for us to be fully reconciled with God.
💞 And this wasn’t a random act by God. He didn’t suddenly figure this out. This was His plan from the beginning.
Back in Genesis 3:15 (NLT) we read these words spoken by God to the serpent after sin had entered the world: “And I will cause hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”
The “he” referred to here is Jesus – who was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of Mary, who was a virgin at the time.
Friend, it isn’t just Christmas that’s about Jesus.
The entire Bible is about Jesus. Because God loves you too much not to pursue you. To fix what you cannot.