Daily Word
A word of encouragement for your day.
THE GREATEST SINNER!
"It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost. I have not come to call the righteous to repentance, but sinners. The Pharisee stood and began praying this in regard to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people….’ But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to raise his eyes toward heaven, but was beating his chest, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’ I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other one;"
Jesus can save only “sinners”—no others.
Self-righteous and complacent people, who think they are better than others, are unsalvable.
Only when we come to the point where we become aware of our total unworthiness and cry out our despair and plea for merciful forgiveness can we be saved.
When a person stands exposed in the piercing light of God, he knows in the depths of his being that
no one has sinned like him—that he, like Paul, is the foremost among sinners, like the tax collector, a man in desperate need of grace.
I am a unique person and my sin is unique: no one else has sinned like me.
All self-righteousness and complacency crumble and there is no longer any room for comparison with others: I stand alone before a holy God and know that hell is open to me unless He has mercy on me and blots out my sin and guilt.
That is when God’s saving grace intervenes, lifting me up “out of the pit of destruction, out of the mud; and He sets my feet on a rock, making my footsteps firm. He puts a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God” (Ps.40:2-4): I am born again!
A completely new, divine and holy life begins to flow from within me, bringing about, step by step, a radical change in the way we I see myself and others, a total re-evaluation of all my fundamental values, and leading me into a completely new way of life.
It is simply a new, spiritual person who has been created: the greatest of all sinners has become a saint!
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