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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781607426264 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Barbour Publishing, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 07/01/2011 |
| Series: | Value Books |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 160 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Pamela L. McQuade is a freelance writer and editor with dozens of projects to her credit. She began her Barbour writing career with coauthor and good friend Toni Sortor, then moved on to write solo. She has also coauthored The Top 100 Men of the Bible with her husband, Drew, under the name Drew Josephs. Over the years, four basset hounds and three cats have made the McQuade turf their home. Pam and Drew volunteer with a local basset rescue and live within sight of Manhattan's Empire State Building.
Read an Excerpt
How Do I Get to Heaven?
Traveling the Romans Road
By Pamela L. McQuade
Barbour Publishing, Inc.
Copyright © 2011 Barbour Publishing, Inc.All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61626-209-9
CHAPTER 1
A Terrible Dilemma
As it is written: "There is no one righteous, not even one." ROMANS 3:10 NIV
When a child is born, the family looks adoringly at the little baby, who appears to be just perfect, a wonderful new human being. Thinking about the future of this child, with all his hope and potential, the new parents are filled with excitement. They imagine the productive, happy life, filled with many blessings, which will be his. And in turn the child's parents feel blessed with a gift from God—a product of their own genes. A newborn child is a delightful creation who will walk down the road of life, learning new things and going wonderful places.
Everyone who is born into this world walks down a road of discovery. None of us know exactly where we are going or what will happen along the way. As we follow the road, we learn more about ourselves and the world around us. Sometimes life seems wonderful, and everything goes our way, but at other times we struggle. This isn't always an easy world to live in. We don't always do the right thing, and people aren't always nice to us.
Innocent or Perfect?
If these proud parents had to describe their newborn child, they would probably use the word innocent. After all, he has not had time to do anything wrong. And in part, they would be right. This young Adam has yet to even grab a favorite toy away from his sister or talk back to his parents. Yet even from the very beginning, this seemingly perfect baby is not as perfect as his family would like to think. Yes, he has ten tiny fingers and ten little toes. He has that wonderful, clean, new-baby smell. He is beautiful. But even in one so small there lies within the ability, even the willingness, to do wrong. Fail to give that baby his bottle, and you will soon hear his complaints. If his mother is busy filling another of his needs, he cannot think, I won't complain, because I know she's doing something good for me. In a moment, he will be screaming at the top of his lungs.
Though it may not seem fair to blame a baby for an instinct he is too young to control, the truth is still there. Baby Adam falls short of the person he was created to be, and he is so much less than the perfect nature of the God his parents hope he will one day accept as his Savior. Like every other human, he has been damaged by the sin Adam and Eve brought into the world. And if no one accepts that truth now, in a couple of years everyone will know it when he hits the "terrible twos." Truly, even innocent Baby Adam is unrighteous—he is not as perfect as the God who created him, so he cannot relate to Him perfectly.
The Beginning of the Problem
The first couple had been created without sin. God made each of them and placed them in a beautiful garden, filled with plants and animals.
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
And God blessed them. And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth." And God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food." And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
GENESIS 1:27–31 ESV
It must have been a wonderful existence in which this couple had a deep, satisfying relationship with their Creator. So where did the imperfection problem start? Eve and Adam got all humanity into trouble when they chose to disobey God's warning:
"You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die."
GENESIS 2:16–17 NIV
God might as well have said to the couple, "Just do this one thing for Me, leave this tree alone." It wasn't a big thing—He wasn't asking them to go hungry, just to avoid that one tree. But because humans are what they are, it was like putting a plate of rich chocolate cake in front of a child and telling her not to eat it.
Instead of clinging to God's command, Eve listened to Satan when he pointed out that eating this forbidden fruit would give her the ability to know good and evil. Though she didn't understand exactly what that meant, in one moment the fruit that hung from that one forbidden tree looked awfully good. Unaware of the trauma that knowledge would cause, Eve succumbed to curiosity and took a bite from the tempting fruit:
When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
GENESIS 3:6 NIV
When the erring woman offered the fruit to her spouse, he didn't say no. Perhaps Adam wondered what it would be like to know good from evil. Would it give him more power? Greater abilities? Make him more like God? No matter what he thought, scripture doesn't record his balking at the idea of disobeying God.
Though this couple had known nothing but good from God, they chose to disobey His single command that limited their freedom. In that moment, they fell into unrighteousness—an act that would affect all of humanity.
What Is Righteousness?
Not surprisingly, righteousness isn't a word most of us—except pastors, theologians, and maybe a few serious Christians—use very often. Maybe we're even a bit fuzzy on what it means.
Though the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines righteousness as "acting in accord with divine or moral law: free from guilt or sin," in Christian terms, righteousness has more to do with the character of God than with some deed on our part. He is a holy God, and our actions cannot reflect His nature because sin has marred our entire beings. Though the dictionary editors might like to think this definition is spiritually accurate, it is overly optimistic because it implies we can be free from guilt or sin by trying to do the right thing.
In his Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, W. E. Vine defines the Greek word for "righteousness," dikaiosune, as being:
"The character or quality of being right or just;" ... It is used to denote an attribute of God, e.g., Rom. 3:5, the context of which shows that "the righteousness of God" means essentially the same as His faithfulness, or truthfulness, that which is consistent with His own nature and promises; Rom. 3:25, 26 speaks of His "righteousness" as exhibited in the death of Christ, which is sufficient to show men that God is neither indifferent to sin nor regards it lightly. On the contrary, it demonstrates that quality of holiness in Him which must find expression in His condemnation of sin.
What does it mean for God to be holy? His very nature is glorious, separated from every impurity. He is completely righteous and perfect, far beyond anything we could hope to become. He never fails or falls into sin. The comparison between our nature and His leaves us in the dust. We fail the righteous test, and only He is holy and worthy of worship (see Revelation 15:4).
How Much Righteousness Do I Need?
When God talks of righteousness, it's complete righteousness. So being mostly righteous isn't enough. We can't enter heaven by being 50.000001 percent righteous—even 99.999999 percent of righteousness wouldn't be enough. Either you are fully righteous or you aren't. That's why the popular idea of earning one's way into heaven is so preposterous. None of us can do well enough in the righteousness department to slide into heaven, because God can accept only those who are perfectly righteous. You either are worthy of heaven or you aren't. No one slides into heaven.
If we ask how much righteousness is enough, we're basically asking how much sin we can get away with. The answer is none. God is perfect, and we need to be, too. Even the smallest bit of sin is enough to separate us from Him. One wicked thought or criticism or one wrong act would prove how imperfect we are in comparison to the God who created us.
Scripture doesn't debate the truth of mankind's sin. It simply defines it by saying, "All wrongdoing is sin" (1 John 5:17 ESV). Then it takes away all our excuses by declaring, "Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins" (Ecclesiastes 7:20 ESV).
If we're honest with ourselves, we must admit that we—and all other humans—make mistakes and even intentionally do wrong. Some of us may do wrong less often than others, but compared to God we are all pitifully imperfect. His hallmark is 100 percent righteousness, and ours is sin. Like our ancestors, Adam and Eve, we cannot avoid this reality.
Even while the family of a newborn is making much of their new and beautiful addition, counting those fingers and toes over and over again, young Adam has been influenced by the sin of his ancestors. Before he has done one intentionally selfish act, because of his inheritance from that first couple, he is already set on a road that leads to physical and spiritual destruction. The Bible warns us, "The soul who sins shall die" (Ezekiel 18:4 ESV). That means both spiritual death and physical death are part of this life, and young Adam cannot avoid it any more than the rest of us can.
Hearing the Bad News
Naturally, none of us like to hear that we have sinned badly enough to deserve death. We would prefer to think we somehow escaped punishment. But God clearly tells us that even the best of us are hopelessly marred by sin. The apostle Paul describes this situation to his Roman audience by reviewing a number of Old Testament verses:
"There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one."
"Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit."
"The poison of vipers is on their lips."
"Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness."
"Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know."
ROMANS 3:10–17 NIV
Paul isn't picking on the Romans here; he's saying that no one has escaped sin's grasp. In the first two chapters of the Romans epistle, Paul considered the spiritual condition of the people of his own nation and that of the other Gentiles to whom he had brought the gospel:
The apostle reassumes his former assertion [in the previous chapters of Romans], and supports it, that a carnal circumcised Jew is no better than a carnal uncircumcised Gentile; it being already sufficiently made to appear, that they are both under the power and guilt of sin; and as a further evidence of it, he produces [in Romans 3:10–17] several passages out of the book of Psalms, and out of the prophecies of Isaiah, which fully express the sad corruption of human nature.
JOHN GILL
Take a look at the following verses, in slightly different translations, which make up Paul's review of the Old Testament truths in Romans 3:10–17.
The fool says in his heart, "There is no God." They are corrupt, doing abominable iniquity; there is none who does good. God looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all fallen away; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.
PSALM 53:1–3 ESV
Not a word from their mouth can be trusted; their heart is filled with malice. Their throat is an open grave; with their tongues they tell lies.
PSALM 5:9 NIV
They make their tongues as sharp as a serpent's; the poison of vipers is on their lips.
PSALM 140:3 NIV
His mouth is full of lies and threats; trouble and evil are under his tongue.
PSALM 10:7 NIV
Their feet rush into sin; they are swift to shed innocent blood. They pursue evil schemes; acts of violence mark their ways. The way of peace they do not know; there is no justice in their paths. They have turned them into crooked roads; no one who walks along them will know peace.
ISAIAH 59:7–8 NIV
This was grim news indeed for those who prided themselves on their own righteousness. All their hopes of being worthy of God clattered to the ground. Obviously Paul didn't come up with this idea of humanity's sinfulness on his own. The bad news about sin was already part of the Old Testament scriptures that the Jews had been familiar with for centuries. Sin has grieved both God and humanity for a long time—from those ancient days up to the present time.
Starting Down the Romans Road
In declaring our inability to be righteous, Paul has started us on what has been called the Romans Road. This consists of seven passages from the book of Romans that describe the plight of humanity in its sin and outline God's solution to the problem. All of us must begin our spiritual journey with the admission that no one but God is righteous.
Like every other human being, as young Adam embarks on his journey of discovery, he is faced with two roads. Eventually he will have to make a choice: Will he take the Romans Road or the way of sin? Will he admit that he, like every other human being, is steeped in sin and is not God's equal? Or will he declare that he is as good as any other human and turn away from God?
Bleak as God's condemnation of humanity is, we have to admit it's true. None of us, under his or her own power, is the equal of God. No person has the moral quality of the One who never delights in wickedness, evildoers, or liars (see Psalm 5:4–6).
The New Testament describes sin with the word hamartia, which means to "miss the mark." Just look at the world around us, filled with people who take advantage of others, the pain of divorce, businesses filled with dishonesty, and a host of other ills. Can we honestly claim that sin has not damaged us—and our world? Who has not missed the mark of God's righteousness?
God has a high and holy standard of what is right, and so long as man follows the divine standard he will see himself as he truly exists in God's eyes. The flat statement of the Almighty is that all men have fallen far short of God's required standard.... God has established His standard of perfection for entry into heaven, and all men have "missed the mark" as an archer's bow would fall to the ground because it fell short of its target.
LEHMAN STRAUSS
Though God gave us commandments to point the way toward Himself and promised that they would be our righteousness (see Deuteronomy 6:25), we have never followed those laws perfectly. The Old Testament includes the Ten Commandments, which establish man's responsibility to God and his fellow man. The first five books of the Old Testament also provide God's directions about the importance of holiness. Anyone who wants to understand what God the Father is like and how to please Him will find much information in these passages.
Yet even all this information has failed to change our minds and hearts. Even when we really want to please God, we often fall short. Why? Because sin entered our lives long before we were aware of it and remains persistent in its influence on us.
Matthew Henry describes the impact of sin, which remains a great burden for every individual, even those who only pretend to follow Christ:
All mankind are under the guilt of sin, as a burden; and under the government and dominion of sin, as enslaved to it, to work wickedness. This is made plain by several passages of scripture from the Old Testament, which describe the corrupt and depraved state of all men, till grace restrain or change them. Great as our advantages are, these texts describe multitudes who call themselves Christians. Their principles and conduct prove that there is no fear of God before their eyes. And where no fear of God is, no good is to be looked for.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from How Do I Get to Heaven? by Pamela L. McQuade. Copyright © 2011 Barbour Publishing, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of Barbour Publishing, Inc..
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Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction: What Is the Romans Road?,Chapter 1: A Terrible Dilemma (Romans 3:10),
Chapter 2: The Problem of Sin (Romans 3:23),
Chapter 3: The Cause of Death (Romans 5:12),
Chapter 4: Wages or Gift? (Romans 6:23),
Chapter 5: Christ and Sinners (Romans 5:8),
Chapter 6: The Commitment of Salvation (Romans 10:9–10),
Chapter 7: Living in Salvation (Romans 10:13),