23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus;
I concluded some time ago that our world is an asylum for the criminally insane, and I’m unlikely to be the only one. It’s only getting worse.
What’s going on? Why are governments, corporations, and organizations around the world determined to “normalize” depravities that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago? Major businesses are willing to commit corporate suicide in an environment of rising consumer resentment for their advocacy of outright perversion.
How do we fix this; find a way back to something like sanity, so that we can live? We should start by admitting that we have a problem.
What faith or belief accurately describes the depraved human condition? Which provides a working solution?
No feat of political consolidation or military might, logic, body position, or intensity of meditation is going to solve this, because they’ve all been tried, and failed repeatedly and miserably.
But by God’s grace and mercy, the solution has been given to us as a gift.
The problem is that we have arrogantly rejected God, and rebelled against Him.
5 The people spoke against God and Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this miserable food.”
6 The Lord sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. 7 So the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, because we have spoken against the Lord and you; intercede with the Lord, that He may remove the serpents from us.” And Moses interceded for the people. 8 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he will live.” 9 And Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on the standard; and it came about, that if a serpent bit any man, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived.
14 As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; 15 so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life.
Nothing summarizes the extent of human depravity like the murder of history’s only innocent man for telling the truth. The people who did this lived and thought much as we do. We just have better technology for killing people and destroying their lives.
As foreshadowed by the serpent on the pole, Jesus lifted up in crucifixion is the indictment for our crimes, a graphic demonstration of the consequences, the announcement of our redemption by God’s mercy, and emblem of His forgiveness. We just have to look up, and see.
6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.