What do you know for sure?
I’ve been writing a lot lately about questions and mystery and uncertainty. I think those are good things, but I always seem to go a bit too far.
A lot of Christians seem to know everything about everything, and I think I overreact by asking questions just to poke at an over-inflated sense of self-assurance. I fear that I appear to insert question marks where God placed exclamation points.
Some questions just break my heart; I encountered one of those last week.
Where will I go?
“When I die, will I go to heaven or hell?”
I shook my head sadly. How can someone who knows Jesus as Savior be tormented by such a fundamental uncertainty? What must happen that someone can read the Bible, pray, sit in church every week, and still not know with absolute assurance where their soul will spend eternity?
I don’t know much, but I know this for sure: I will spend eternity in community with the Trinity. What that looks like, how it works—those are mysteries. But I will be united with Love.
That’s the reality of grace, for me and for anyone else who accepts Jesus. I don’t deserve it, can’t earn it; it’s a gift freely given out of sacrificial agape.
Those of us who follow Jesus mess up, just like everyone else. We fail, disappoint those who count on us, and do what we don’t want to do. We fall short of the mark, and there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it. But because of faith in Jesus, none of that can separate us from God.
Super glue
My wife offers one of my favorite images. She reminds me that all of my mistakes and faults and sins are recorded on two facing pages for God to see. Nothing is missed.
At the cross, Jesus coated those pages with super glue and slammed them together. They can’t be separated. All of that stuff is gone. Because of Jesus, when God opens the book He sees clean, white pages.
That’s the gospel, the Good News. It’s the truth.
Lots of times, the questions matter more than the answers.
This isn’t one of those times.
Do you KNOW this good news—absolutely, for sure?
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