“Jesus answered them, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.’” Luke 5:31-32

We were all together in 1 place but doing our own thing. My daughter was looking at her phone to pass the time when she suddenly blurted out…”EWWWWWWWW!” She had just received a picture of a friend who had gotten a deep cut on their leg. NATURALLY… everyone wanted to SEE it TOO. That is… until they saw it! When my grandson looked at it, he IMMEDIATELY turned away and almost threw up. Ahh the power of a visual!

Last night at church, my wife and a good friend were talking about God and bantering about His tolerance toward evil. Having just had a fun study about Easter, the question came up, “why did God ‘forsake’ or ‘turn away’ from His Son on the cross?” I guess we were trying to draw a line of just how close God COULD get to sin without getting TOO close! Maybe a gross picture of a nasty, deep cut, might help provide an answer. Because the answer MATTERS!

There are LOTS of opinions out there about sin and how it removes us from God because he cannot tolerate it. I listened to a national preacher repeat the ridiculous statement that unless you ‘confess’ to a particular sin, you won’t be forgiven! Being an expert at sin and having a short memory myself, I know that there is NO way I could even ‘keep up’ to get total forgiveness! My cut is WAYYYY too deep! Enter Jesus!

I have a Doctor friend that has no problem looking at pictures like this. He has seen SO many real life cuts that it is NORMAL for him. He can even go to the extreme end, smile and say, “oh… cool!” Such is the outcome of familiarity! Unless you are God!

God will not and cannot not dwell with evil. You might say He has a weak stomach for sin and, because He is perfect, can NEVER get used to it. When His own Son took on ALL of my sin, evil and punishment… along with yours, God could not even LOOK! And THAT, my friends, was the eternal deal!

I was lost in sin. God and I could not reach each other. But because of His love for both His Father AND for me, Jesus said, “no worries dad, I’ll take care of this!” And He did! EVEN THOUGH HE KNEW THE PRICE! I don’t know about you…but with a love offer like that, I simply CAN’T turn away.