The Practice Of Condemnation

For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to seperate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8: 38-39 NKJV 

One cannot go too far into the bible before they see the complete love of God toward us.  Despite our numerous attempts to do things our own way, our loving God always welcomes us back into his loving arms.  For no matter how far it is that we stray or just what we've done, we are never too far from Gods love and forgiveness.  No greater love has ever been known.  Our human condition leaves us with desires that obviously run contrary to our Lords will.  The scripture refers to this as our flesh.  However, just like the rest of us, it is God who created each of us completely.  So, every percieved imperfection that we feel we see in ourselves, is from God who created us.  For those of us who  like to torture ourselves by looking in the mirror and searching for something wrong with ourselves, I present to you Gods view of his creation.

So God created man in His own image; in the image of God he created him;  male and female he created them.

Genesis 1:27 NKJV 

Did you ever stand in front of the mirror and just say to yourself, "YOU are Gods loved creation, created in His image?"  For the longest time I couldn't.  See, I did not view myself as created in my Lords image.  Yes, I knew the scriptures, but we all have a way of distorting the truth about ourselves.  Where God sees a wonderful, beautiful creation that he made to resemble himself, all too often we only see a dirty, sin soaked and imperfect soul.  Trust me, this voice inside of us IS NOT from God.  

It would seem at times that we are in the business of condemnation.  There is something that clouds our view of ourselves and leads us to believe that Gods loved creation is only a imperfection.  After all, who could ever love someone like us?  For the scriptures tell us that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God right?  Yes, but something happened on the way to the empty tomb that morning that many of us don't put into perspective.  

The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should persish but that all should come to repentance.

2 Peter 3:9 NKJV 

Understand, that it is Gods love and mercy that sent Christ to that cross to give his life for the sins of mankind.  Not only that, but Jesus gave his life willingly, knowing the torment that lay ahead of Him.  One of the hardest habits to break is our habit of condemnation.  When we fall into this trap, we fail to see ourselves as our loving heavenly Father sees us through his eyes.

~Scott~