There really is no getting around the fact that God seems to lay down some pretty lofty and demanding expectations for us to comply with…if we have any hopes or longing to spend eternity with Him. I would even call them ‘unrealistic requirements’.

I mean, really…listen to some of these familiar phrases we have read in scripture:

“Go and sin no more.” (John 5:14; 8:11).

“Be Holy in all your conduct, for I am holy…” (1 Pet. 1:15-16)

“Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” (Matt.5:48)

“I give you this commandment to love others as I have loved you.” (John 15:12; 13:34)

And let’s not forget those reminders that despite whatever impressive ‘works for God’ we may do and accomplish over the span of our lives, if we have not been perfected in His love, then all of our works are for ‘naught’, and profit us nothing. If we learn nothing else from Matt. 7:21-23 and 1 Cor. 13:1-8, it should be this.

Didn’t Jesus say in multiple places that we cannot be His disciple unless we are willing to ‘forsake all’…and ‘take up a cross and follow Him’? (Luke 14:25-27,33; Luke 9:23; Mark 10:21)

And what about that statement made in Hebrews 12:14 that declares: “Without holiness, no one will see the Lord”? And dare I point out 1 Cor. 6:9-11 and Gal. 5:19-21? What are we to make of that? Or were you taught that when God looks down upon us, that He really doesn’t ‘see us’, but He ‘only sees Jesus’…and not our wretched sinfulness?

It would seem that we find ourselves standing at a fork in the road as we face a troubling dilemma, having to make one of two choices. We can do, as many have done in the past… which is throw are arms up in despair and admit that there is no way anyone could ever meet such demands. Some might become angry and harden their hearts … as they turn and go their own way. We actually read of some disciples who did that early on with Jesus, accusing Him of making things ‘too hard’ (John 6:60-66; Matt. 19:22)

Others might stumble across ‘other gospels, and another Jesus', and even receive ‘another spirit’ that promises them an ‘easier way’ to eternal life; and friends…there is no shortage of people who have done this and ended up taking that ‘broad path that leads to a wide gate’, and eventual ‘destruction’… thanks to the plethora of ‘others gospels’ out there today being peddled. (Matt. 7:13-14; 2 Cor. 11:3-4).

Or, there is the other ‘fork in the road’, which will be less traveled, and ‘narrow’, by the way…that might have us taking the approach that Mary and Nicodemus did, who both asked, when confronted with some unrealistic information to process…asking: “How can these things be?” (Luke 1:34; John 3:8)

I mean, let’s be real here…while many of the Pharisees back in Jesus’s day thought they were doing a pretty good job at keeping the law and being holier than everyone else, that sermon Jesus preached in Matt. 5:21-48 should have culled most everyone out, when He started talking about how the law used to read…but now... but NOW...He was making it known that if a man just entertained lustful thoughts in his heart, he had already committed the act of adultery. Or that line about calling someone a ‘fool’ put you in danger of ‘hell fire’. No wonder Paul would lament in Romans 7 - “Oh wretched man that I am…I want to obey this law in which I agree with but this body of death prevents me from being able to do so…what am I to do?”

So for those of you who have not yet ‘thrown the towel in’. in frustration and believe that God means what He says….but you are just not sure how this can actually happen…I’ve got some good news for you. He doesn’t expect you to do this on your own; which is what most of us have specialized in attempting to do for most of our lives.

And if you have stuck around long enough to ‘want to hear more’, then consider what Jesus shared in John 15:1-8, where He invites us to ‘abide in Him’, assuring us that ‘apart from Him, we can do nothing!”

I hope you know that it would be considered abuse, if you demanded that your 5-year old learn to ‘fly’ by flapping their arms as you ordered them to step off the roof of your house. Or if you fastened a 100-lb ball and chain to your 16-year old son/daughter before tossing them in the lake and insisted they swim across on their own to the other side…you would end up in prison. So how on earth can a ‘loving God’ make such unreasonable demands that we go and ‘keep His law…or else’? (Rom. 2:13). A law, that in summary… requires us to love Him with all our hearts and to love others (including our enemies) as He loved us? Especially when God KNOWS…we don’t have it in us to do!?

Guess what? You are correct, in saying we don’t have it in us to do…which is exactly why we have to surrender our hearts to Jesus in order for Him…to begin a work in us of purifying our defiled hearts as He comes in to remove, once and for all…every part within our wicked and deceptive hearts that is not like His nature. This is what it means to be ‘sanctified’ and ‘conformed to His image’, as we ‘become a new creation in Christ’ (Rom. 8:29; 2 Cor. 5:17) This is the ‘will of God’ for us all. (Matt. 7:21; 1 Thess. 4:3; 1 Pet. 4:1-2)

Can I just tell you here and now…that God would never make such ‘unreasonable demands’ of us that were impossible to be met… unless He had a ‘plan’. I just think  we mislead people when we these alluring promises to ‘lost seekers’…hoping to draw them in…telling how God has this ‘wonderful plan’ for their lives. Is it possible that OUR idea of what His ‘plan’ looks like probably differs from what God’s ‘plan’ is for us; and that might explain why lots of folks don’t stick around when ‘tribulation’ comes; or they ‘go their own way’ and wither up, never bringing any fruit to maturity, like the parable of the sower lays out for us to see? (Matt. 13; Mark 4; Luke 8)

And that is also where so many have gotten it wrong from Paul’s writings in Romans 7… thinking he continued to struggle with sin…and lived as a ‘sinner’; but for some odd reason seem to have missed what all he wrote in chapter 6…and 8, where he explains exactly ‘how’…any this is possible where we can be supernaturally transformed into His nature and likeness.  Why is it we are so quick to insist out of one side our our mouth that 'nobody can live without sinning'...but then be quick to quote Phil. 4:13, how "we can do ALL things...THROUGH Christ who strengthens us"? 

Meet me back here tomorrow?