SueB

If we were good and never did anything wrong why would Christ need to die for us? We need to fully understand that none of us are inherently good, we are all sinners and that Christ died for us while we were sinners, while we were at our utter worst. There is no sin that has not been dealt with on the Cross. It is God's free gift of love to us so that we may become His adopted children through no good works of our own. All the time the devil does accuse us, saying we are too bad to be forgiven, we are bad parents, bad citizens, bad children etc but when we know truly that God sent His son to die for us, when we were at our vilest then we can know that nothing can separate us from God's love and the devil has no power over us. Sin has been defeated by Christ's death on the Cross and no matter how hard the devil tries to tell us that we are not worthy or good enough we can say with full confidence that God has forgiven our sins and the devil has no power over us.

We should rejoice in our sufferings and tribulations because as we go through them with God we come to rely upon God more and more, we know that through it all God is over all and that He is building into us perseverence, character and hope. We can understand that God has a plan and a purpose for His people and that everything He does/brings to us has a good purpose even if we don't see it at the time. Perseverence - We press on because we know God is in control and we can rely on Him even when we think we cannot keep going. Character - Learning to rely upon God, to allow Him to build our character, to mould us, to teach us, to grow us up in His ways. Hope - We are not of this world, our hope comes from God above, we look to Him and not worldly things, our hope and knowledge that He has a place prepared for us at the end of time, that His plan is coming to fruition.

Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Abraham did nothing of himself. He was justified because of his faith not something he did. For us - we believe that God sent His son Jesus to die for our sins, while we were still enemies of God. We believe this (faith) and can stand justified before God as we know He has forgiven us all our sins. We have done nothing, of ourselves, to cause this and through the free gift to us of the death of Jesus we can stand justified before God.