My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus ChristRecently, I took a trip that required flying. When they called our flight, I was at the gate ready to board. Do you know I had to wait! See I thought that the first ones there boarded first. As it turns out, the “preferred” customers got to board first. Since I was not a preferred customer, I had to wait while the special customers got on the plane, and I had to “get my tail on the tail”. The airline made distinctions and treated some customers better because they had more money and could pay for better treatment. It doesn't just happen at airlines; it happens at school when some kids are treated differently by other kids because they can’t afford designer clothes, or aren't as smart as others, so teachers treat them differently. Perhaps it’s a theater or a ball game, and you can’t afford a nice box seat, so you have to sit in the nose bleed section with a pair of binoculars just to see what is happening. I suppose that some of these distinctions are necessary. As I thought about the ways and divisions that society places on people based on what they look like, or the size of their bank account, the color of their skin, or even their accomplishments; I was reminded that:
We have a God that does not treat people differently because of our appearance, power, fame or anything else that society says is important. Before God, we are all the same; the ground is level. There is absolutely nothing that you or I can do to better our position before God. If you are like me, you should be doing a happy dance right now because that means that you don’t have to feel inadequate as though others are better than you. You can not do anything to make God love you more or less than he already does. Praise God!
It also means that, to God, sin is sin. The bank robber or serial killer is no worse than you or I. We often forget that. If we break one command we have broken them all; lying is no better than killing. We as people set degrees of sin but God does not. It’s similar to the classes in college that you take pass/ fail. Except the only way to pass is to trust that God is whom he says he is and that what he did on the cross was enough for you and me.
I am completely amazed and overjoyed that God only cares about our heart condition and nothing else matters to him. If it doesn't matter to him perhaps it should not matter to us either. What should matter to us is that there are people who we see every day that need God to change their heart because that is what matters to God.
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