Under construction until 11/15/24
The Belt of Truth
Please consider these two Biblical Truths about God and apply them to your life.
First of all, God loves you. I'm sure you've heard that before. But have you ever really believed it about yourself?
Many Bible passages talk about God's love. The most famous is probably
John 3:16
"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
Be honest with yourself. In your mind can you personalize John 3:16 by saying it like this:
"For God so loved me, that He gave His only son, Jesus, that if I would believe in Jesus that I would not perish in Hell but would have eternal life in Heaven."
Some people miss this truth. Maybe they are suspicious of God and His plans. Maybe they have an image of themselves that won’t let them accept the love of God. Maybe their life has been so distant from God that the idea of “God’s Love” is totally foreign to them.
No matter the reason, if you are having problems accepting the love of God, please know that God made the first move to win you. And He did it with only the hope that you would accept Him. Here’s what I mean by that
Romans 5:8
But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Personalizing both verses will help you have a different perspective – a different way of looking at and thinking about God.
Personalizing them will also help you with the next Truth, which can be even more difficult for some people to accept.
The Second Truth is this. You have a problem that will keep you out of Heaven. God calls that problem sin. And sin is simply NOT living by God’s rules.
God knows that sin is harmful. It hurts you and your family. It also separates you from God, who is 100% Holy.
Isaiah 59:2
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.
This idea that you are separated from God and headed to Hell is summed up in one word: Lost.
And the opposite of that is called Saved - having your sins forgiven and going to Heaven
You might ask: “Who does God consider to be a sinner – to be lost.
Answer: Everyone.
Bible verses include:
Romans 3:23
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
That is saying that everyone has sin in their life. And, therefore, no one is holy.
Remember when I said this Truth – that you are a sinner - is difficult for some people to accept. The difficult thing is admitting to being a sinner. Most people want to say about themselves, “I’m basically a good person.”
There’s the difficulty. You can maintain your pride, or you can agree with God, and see yourself the way He sees you, and admit / confess to Him that you are a sinner.
As you think about that, let me make something clear. While your sin does separate you from God. It does NOT cause Him to stop loving you.
You would be confessing to the One who loves you, who has done everything He can to save you from the penalty of your sins.
Still not ready? Then let me point out that God’s standard for getting into Heaven is perfection, or 100% holiness.
God wants you to be Holy like Him so that you can be in Heaven with Him.
1 Peter 1:15-16
but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior;
because it is written, "YOU SHALL BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY."
And Jesus told people who were outwardly good that they were not quite good enough.
Matthew 5:48
Therefore, you shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
The same God who loves you with an everlasting love has set an impossible standard - perfect holiness - as the requirement for going to Heaven.
Why would He do that?
One reason is to eliminate sin from your life. Sin is not allowed in Heaven. The problems that plague us here will be not exist in Heaven.
So, He set this requirement of “Perfection” for your own good. He did it because He loves you. And He wants you to be with Him.
God sets the requirement so high because He wants you to see that you can’t save yourself. He wants you to see that you need a savior. You need Jesus.
Put on the Full Armor of God
Breasplate of Righteousness
Righteousness is doing the right things. It is the opposite of being sinful.
I really don’t think there are very many people who would call themselves Holy or Perfect. But I do hear many people say that they are good. They look at their life and say, “I may not be perfect, but I’m a good person.”
Most people have the idea that when God judges them, He will balance their good deeds against their bad deeds (their righteousness against their sinfulness). And if the good outweighs the bad, they think God will let them into Heaven.
What they may not know or think about is the absolute holiness of God. And more, they have no idea of what God thinks about their good deeds. So here is that cold, hard fact:
Your sin has stained everything in your life, even the things that seem good to you.
Isaiah 64:6
6 For all of us have become like one who is unclean, And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; And all of us wither like a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
Why does God see even your good deeds as being like a filthy garment?
Why? Because everything about us is tainted with our sin. We don't have anything pure, holy, or perfect. God didn’t say just be good. He said be Holy.
That is how Lost you really are. God is rejecting even your good deeds because of the sin that's in your life.
So, it seems like a big problem – and it is. On one hand God loves you. On the other, God is Holy and will only accept holy people. But we’re not holy. Our sin has contaminated everything in our life – even our good deeds.
And to go a step further, God is our Judge. And He gives only Perfect Justice. As our Judge, He must uphold His own law and, therefore, must punish sin.
Please listen: If you force God to judge you based on your personal righteousness, then you are doomed already.
God knows this. And God has provided the solution, a way for you to be judged based on the Righteousness of Jesus Christ instead of your own personal righteousness. You can put on His Breastplate of Righteousness.
How? How can you exchange your sin-stained righteousness for the Holiness of Jesus Christ?
To answer that, I need you to understand the Shoes of the Gospel of Peace – in the next section.... Let's go to the next section.
Put on the Full Armor of God
Shoes of the Gospel
Let me define the Gospel. The word itself simply means good news. But in the Bible, it is the good news of what has been accomplished for you by the Death, Burial and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Here it is defined in the Bible.
1 Corinthians 15:1-4 (emphasis & underlines are mine)
1 Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand,
2 by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.
3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
4 and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,
The actual Good News - the primary accomplishment – is mentioned in verses 1 and 2. Both are talking about salvation, which is having your sins forgiven, being made holy in God’s eyes, and going to Heaven instead of Hell.
Verse 1 talks about “standing” in the gospel. That is talking about the daily connection you have with God – no longer separated.
Verse 2 talks about being saved by the gospel. That is from the moment you were saved until the time you step into Heaven and then forever after.
But how does any of that apply to you? What does the death of Jesus on the Cross have to do with you?
Let’s go back to our two verses that we personalized:
John 3:16
"For God so loved me, that He gave His only son, Jesus, that if I would believe in Jesus that I would not perish in Hell but would have eternal life in Heaven."
Romans 5:8
But God demonstrates His own love toward me, in that while I am still a sinner, Christ died for me.
God allows that you can exchange your life with Jesus. That means that you would be credited with His sinless life, and He would be charged with your sins AND would pay the penalty for those sins.
What is that penalty?
Romans 6:23
For the wages of sin is death, but the gracious gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The penalty is Death. The thing that you earn from sin is eternal death – Hell.
What is happening at the Cross is that Jesus is paying for – dying for – your lifetime of sin.
This is very important for you to understand. While it is true that God loves the whole world, and that Jesus died for the sins of the whole world, it is also true that the whole world is not going to Heaven. To help you with this fact, I asked you to personalize a couple of verses to draw your attention to what really matters at this moment. The focus is on you, just you. So here it is. The best understanding of the Cross is to see it as if that cross was made for you – for your punishment. And Jesus was dying on your cross, for your sins, literally taking your place. That’s how personal it is.
But there is more.
In the Armor of God, the shoes are called not just The Gospel, but The Gospel of Peace.
What’s the Peace?
You’ll recall that your sin created a separation between you and God. Not only does your sin separate you and God, ultimately landing you in Hell while He is in Heaven, but it is as if you have by your behavior declared war against God.
I’m sure you didn’t really intend to pick a fight with The Almighty. But you have chosen daily to be on the opposite side. Your sins are an outrage to Him, and an insult to His Son, Jesus, the One who died in your place.
But God is loving and has patiently suffered your insults, waiting for you to come to Him, perhaps waiting for you to come to this point in time.
The solution for this is, once again, Jesus and the Cross.
Look at these verses:
Colossians 1:19-22
19 For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him (Jesus),
20 and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.
21 And although you were previously alienated and hostile in attitude, engaged in evil deeds, 22 yet He has now reconciled you in His body of flesh through death, in order to present you before Him (the Father) holy and blameless and beyond reproach
Reconcile - means to settle disagreements and restore relationships.
Why would the Father and Jesus do this? Look at that last line.
“to present you before Him (the Father) holy and blameless and beyond reproach”
Want to see it stated just a bit differently? I’ve already given you Romans 5:8, just keep reading through verse 11.
Romans 5:8-11
8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. 11 And not only this, but we also celebrate in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.
The Gospel (of Peace) remembers the Cross of Christ –
His agony, His suffering, because of your sin.
The Gospel (of Peace) remembers the Burial of Christ –
The finality of it. Once and for all, the debt of your sin is paid in full.
The Gospel (of Peace) remembers the Resurrection of Jesus Christ! –
His Complete and Total Victory over death and the grave
His Complete and Total Victory over Satan and Hell
His Complete and Total Victory over sin
His Complete and Total Victory reconciling you with God and presenting you holy and blameless and beyond reproach!!
That’s the “Good” in the Good News.
In the previous section we talked about Good Deeds or Righteousness. And how lost you really are. He knows all that and has provided a way for you to be judged based on the Righteousness of Jesus Christ instead of your own personal righteousness. You can put on His Breastplate of Righteousness, which is the one and only Pure and Acceptable Righteousness.
In this section we’ve seen that through Jesus and the Cross you can be presented to God the Father as holy and blameless and beyond reproach!
Now, we’ve come to the point where we can answer the questions.
How do I get this?”
What is the cost?”
How is His Righteousness used for me instead of my own?
The next section has that answer.
Put on the Full Armor of God
Shield of Faith
What is faith? Many would say it is believing in something. And that is part of it. But to understand Bible Faith, you have to include “Trust.” You can believe in something or someone without really trusting them for anything. So, Bible Faith is trusting what you believe in.
As we have seen, most people believe that they are basically good. And they hope they’ll go to Heaven because of that belief (you should know by now just how bad that idea is). They may know about Jesus. They may believe in Him, that He is real person. They may know a lot of details about His life. But, if they are honest with themselves, they’ll realize that they are really NOT trusting Jesus. They are just living their life and hoping it works out.
Back at the start I gave you two truths to consider. I said that the second one is the hardest for most people to accept. But now we’ve come to that time. That point where you can maintain your pride or you can confess your sin.
So let me give you a few verses dealing with confession:
Psalm 32:5
I acknowledged my sin to You,
And I did not hide my guilt;
I said, “I will confess my wrongdoings to the Lord”;
And You forgave the guilt of my sin.
1 John 1:9
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous, so that He will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Romans 4:5 – (I’ve added the comment about “work.”)
5 But to the one who does not work (who does not rely on his own good deeds), but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness,
In Romans 4:5 look at that phrase “Him who justifies the ungodly”. That is another way to say “Him who saves the ungodly”. If you insist that you are “good” and won’t confess your sin, then God may say that He has nothing to pardon. And you will be left to face judgement with your own sin-soaked righteousness. Please don’t do that.
We’re finally there. The verses below are some of the clearest concerning how to be saved. And we’re going to step through each phrase.
Romans 10:9-10
9 that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;
10 for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.
Look at verse 9 and that phrase “confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord.” This deals with turning away from your old sin habits and turning to Jesus. It includes letting Jesus direct your life, which many Christians would describe as “making Jesus Lord of your life.” But, quite honestly, you don’t make Him Lord of your life. He’s already the One and Only Lord. He is Lord of All. The question is whether you are prepared to accept that? And live by it.
The second half of verse 9 is looking at Jesus and the Cross. He wants you to believe – personally - in the Good News of the Gospel. Look at that phrase “believe in your heart” – that’s about your trust – trust in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus.
This is where you transfer your trust from trusting your own personal righteousness to that of Jesus and the Cross.
How?
In verse 10 He explains.
He says “with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness.”
That’s it!
That kind of Trusting Belief in the Gospel results in the very thing that you don’t have – Righteousness! The thing that sin destroyed in your life is given to you, fresh and new!!
And simultaneously in verse 10 He says this: “and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.”
Confessing your sin, allows God to forgive you.
Just think of it. New Righteousness and all your sins forgiven. He says that results in Salvation – going to Heaven (and so much more).
Put on the Full Armor of God
Helmet of Salvation
Coming Soon
Put on the Full Armor of God
Sword of the Spirit
Coming Soon
Put on the Full Armor of God
Pray
Coming Soon