Highlights

Episode 57 | If You Were to Die Tonight...?

Relent, O LORD! How long will it be? Have compassion on your servants. (Psalm 90:13)

Thankfully, we are meant to stand before God not on the basis of our merit but on the basis of his mercy?

If you were to die tonight, and God were to ask you, “Why should I let you into my eternal kingdom?” What would your answer be? Our eternal destiny depends on getting this right.

The impulse to be better than others runs so deep in us that we are seldom even aware of it. ...the societal pressure to be superior, not to mention our innate longing for it, is powerful...We live in a particularly competitive culture...But this striving for superiority never leads to rest. There are always people who are below us - that feeds our pride. And then there are always people above us, and that feeds our dis-ease with who we ourselves are....We have to keep in mind that the Apostle Paul...pushes against this and develops his whole theology of grace. (Miroslav Volf - The Trinity Forum Conversations Podcast)

If I’m better than most other people, isn’t that good enough?

In our more honest moments, I think we all realize we’re like the moon. We have a dark side. We all have things for which we feel deeply ashamed...regrets...things we’ve done...things we’ve left undone.

The line between good and evil does not pass between states, nor between classes, nor between parties either - but right through every human heart. (Alexander Solzhenitsyn)

Is it fair for God to hold us to such high standards?

If the plan is to create an everlasting paradise that exceeds our wildest dreams - a finale to our sordid history that is so spectacular, so surpassingly wonderful that our words and imagination fall miserably short in any attempt to describe it. If this is the plan, then...all sin/imperfection needs to be abolished...then all that leads to sorrow and death needs to be banished...He will need to “get all the hell out of earth” and “get all the hell out of us. We are destined for more than what we’ve become. And God won’t settle for anything less. Neither should we!

Can’t my good works compensate for my bad ones?

Love is intrinsic to his nature, but so is righteousness and justice.

How can God forgive us and be just at the same time?

The essence of sin is we human beings substitute ourselves for God, while the essence of salvation is God substitutes himself for us. We...put ourselves where only God deserves to be; God...puts himself where we deserve to be. (John Stott, quoted by Tim Keller, The Reason for God) We are freed to live out our glorious and eternal destiny, not by our doing, but by his dying. Not by our merit but by his mercy.