Day 7 - Week 5 - Romans 3:23 - "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."

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It's our last night on the first stop of our trip down the Romans Road...say it now without looking!

Romans 3:23 "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."

This is an easy verse, but as we've seen before, there can be a lot of power packed in a minimum amount of words!  This verse falls in that category.  This is the verse that has to convict you and me, and anyone that we are presenting the truth of God's plan of salvation to, of our need for a savior.  Until we are convinced that we are sinners, and along with that convincing, that our sinfulness has a negative effect of some kind, what difference does it make?  How can you convince someone of their need of salvation if they don't understand what they are losing, and why they are losing it?  If this verse wasn't perfectly constructed, it may lack that effect.  But it was.

First point --- We have all sinned.  Black and white, no doubt about it.  Don't try to argue with it, because you'll lose.  There's not a human alive who can claim perfection other than the One who came to live, die and be resurrected, and then ascended to sit on the right hand of God the Father.  Other than Jesus, have you ever heard of anyone claiming a life of perfection?  Nope - we have all sinned.  Some of us have committed what the world calls the "big sins"...murder, adultery, embezzlement...you know, the kind of sins that make the newspapers (or now the ones that go viral on the Internet)!  But all of us have committed the "lesser" sins...lying, gossip, cheating on tests, cheating on taxes...the sins that no one ever really finds out about, but they are there...and they convict us all of the crime of which we're accused..."SINNER."   And once we're convicted of that, it doesn't matter the size of the sin that took us there...in fact in God's eyes, they're all the same...they each show that we don't esteem Him to be in authority over us in some way or another.  And that attitude is what truly convicts us.

Sin causes us to fall short --- fall short of the "glory of God."  So sin prevents us from experiencing the glory of God, and conversely we know that without sin in our life, we would come into the glory of God.  That's where Jesus' life of perfection took Him --- right back into the presence of the glory of God.  Luke testified to this in Acts 7:55 when he relayed to us the death of the first martyr, Stephen, "But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God." 

Now you want to hear the best part?  (Although I feel like I'm giving away a little bit of the secret of the rest of our verses as travel down this road in Rome.)  Even though we are sinners, even though we deserve to be condemned...we, too, end up exactly where Satan would love to never see us...and all because of Jesus our Savior.  In Jude 1:24-25, we hear the exciting news.."To him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy-- to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen."  Yes, Christ is the One who can keep us from falling into the pit that Satan would have us be bound in, and Christ is the One who will, with great joy, present us to God before His glorious persence...without fault, because although we are convicted sinners, He is willing to take the sentence of judgment from us. 

Amazing grace - how very, very sweet the sound!