During his walk on this earth, Jesus was once approached by one of the religious leaders of those days, a scholar of the Jewish religious law. The man asked Jesus: Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?
This is how Jesus answered him:
[Matthew 22:37-39] “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the first and the greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
These words show what matters to God most. He wants us to love and obey Him. He wants us to put Him first in our life.
These words of Jesus were not a new teaching. He was just reminding His hearers what God had already revealed through the prophet Moses more than thousand years before.
[Deuteronomy 6:4-5] Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
[Leviticus 19:18] You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.
Please take some time to reflect. Do you love God with all your being? Do you love others as you love yourself? This is what God desires the most, not religious traditions, rituals and activities.
If we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that we all failed to keep these two commandments. Therefore, we stand condemned before God because we failed to meet His standard of righteousness. The Bible says:
[Romans 3:10-11] There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God.
[Romans 3:23] All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
[1 John 1:8] If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
God creates every human being with a conscience, that silent voice that tells us the difference between right and wrong. This moral standard is the same for all cultures, including the most primitive ones. Everybody knows the difference between right and wrong, because everybody has a conscience.
From an early age, however, we begin to disobey our conscience. The more we disobey it, the fainter its voice becomes. Each time we violate our conscience we violate God’s universal moral standard. We are guilty before him and stand condemned before our own judgment seat, our God-given conscience. The Bible calls these violations sins.
Because everybody has a conscience that they willfully violated, nobody can claim to be innocent or plead ignorance. God is therefore justified in holding all people accountable, even if they’ve never read the Bible. The Bible says:
[Romans 2:12-16] All who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness.
The law mentioned here refers to God’s requirements and his standard of righteousness as revealed in the Bible. Gentile means non-Jewish, and in a wider sense an unbeliever or a heathen.
As we keep on sinning, we drift farther and farther from God. Our mind is getting darker, and our heart is getting harder. Before we know it, we are separated from God, because God hates sin. The Bible says:
[Isaiah 59:1-2] The Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear; but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.
Most people are not even aware of this. They are going their own way, far from God, doing their own things, living their life as they see fit, as if God didn’t exist. They want to be independent, doing what they please, how they please, when they please. They are rebels at heart. Many even call themselves Christians.
This kind of attitude is a very serious matter in God’s eyes. He cannot and will not accept rebels and sinners in his presence. God is holy and abhors sin. He requires holiness.
In the Bible he commands his people several times to be holy:
[Leviticus 11:44] Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy.
[Leviticus 19:2] You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.
[Leviticus 20:26] You shall be holy to me.
The Bible also says:
[Hebrews 12:14] Without holiness no one will see the Lord.
[1 Peter 1:15] As he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct.
God’s standard of holiness, what is right and wrong in his eyes, is revealed in the Bible. If we want to understand where we stand with him, we need to examine ourselves in the light of the Bible. Modern-day society is far from God, so comparing ourselves with other people will make us mistakenly believe we are not too bad. But the Bible says:
[Proverbs 14:12] There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.
To help you better understand what God sees as sin, I’ve put together a sample list of sins at the end of this document.
Before we continue, you need to understand one essential truth: Our visible world is not everything there is. The Bible tells us that there is an eternal and invisible world that is as real as the visible one. When we die, we do not simply cease to exist. Most people know this deep in their heart.
[Ecclesiastes 3:11] He has put eternity into man’s heart, yet no one can fathom what God has done from the beginning to the end.
This world is a testing ground, and our life here is a test that will determine where we will spend eternity. Once we die, the only thing that will matter is how we lived our life. If we lived lives pleasing to God, we will spend eternity in his presence. If not, we will be forever separated from him. Once we die, our eternal fate is sealed. There is no going back. There is no reincarnation. There is no second chance. The Bible says:
[Hebrews 9:27] It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes the judgment.
Are you ready to face this judgment? You’d better prepare for it, because you will certainly be judged, whether you believe it or not, whether you like it or not.