Jesus Is ______: Find a New Way to Be Human

by Judah Smith

Christianity is not about not swearing. It’s not about not having impure thoughts. Really, it’s not about not at all. Christianity is about Jesus.

Nowhere in the Bible, however, do we find God distinguishing between levels of sin. God doesn’t share our rating system. To him, all sin is equally evil, and all sinners are equally lovable. Obviously sins have different consequences: some will get you incarcerated or your face punched in, while others won’t even be noticed. But God just calls sin, sin.

freedom starts with honesty.

You don’t have to be good to be Jesus’s friend. You just have to be honest.

God transforms us one area at a time.

But when sin becomes more important than the sinner, an alarm needs to go off in our heads.

“Grace is God meeting us at our point of need in the Person of Jesus Christ.”

When you focus on a person instead of a set of rules, things fall into place.

That creates conflict and makes obedience difficult. Rules address behavior, but they don’t deal with the heart. They don’t adjust attitudes. They don’t heal the inconsistencies and fractures deep in our souls that could destroy us in the end. Grace, on the other hand, is internal. It works on a heart level. Where rules attempt to force us to do the opposite of what we want, grace actually changes what we want. It creates internal consistency and integrity. Doing what is right becomes much easier.

When we focus on Jesus instead of a code of conduct, when grace changes our desires so we are internally motivated and not just externally restrained, we become a lot more fun to be around.

Grace motivates us to live right because it first draws us close to Jesus. As we get to know him more, we want to be more like him. It’s natural, it’s organic, and it’s effective.

Sometimes our brains are our own worst enemies because grace isn’t logical.

true happiness cannot be found in anything unless it is first found in God.