Can it Be Forever Gone?

 Did you ever wish you could undo what you’ve done? Did you ever wish you could start all over with a clean slate? Well, you can. That’s precisely what God has done for everyone who comes to him, trusting Him that his word is true, His promises are true; And when He tells us, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things have become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

 

For the one who trusts Christ, all sins from their past are gone. They have a clean slate in much the same way as the heavens and the earth will one day be done away with and God will create a new heavens and earth. Listen to Revelation 21:1 as John writes: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea.”

 

Listen also to Isaiah 65:17 “For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; And the former things will not be remembered or come to mind.

 

And now 2 Peter 3:10 “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.”

 

In the new creation everything will be new – land masses, flora, forests, continents, the stars, the planets – even the air we will breathe. All new.  And in the same way, God sees everything new in the life of those who come to Christ by faith. Every sin in our past is gone, covered with the blood of Christ. A clean slate.

But even more than that, while it is true that every time we now sin we muddy that new slate . . . BUT (and this is critical to remember) when we confess and repent, the Holy Spirit of God immediately restores the slate to its original post-conversion pristine condition. This holds true even for the sins we commit in ignorance, not knowing we have sinned, which happens all the time. But God, who knows our hearts, who knows we want to live holy lives – even things we do in ignorance God wipes completely clean.

 

For example,  Referring to the Day of Atonement when the High Priest took the sacrificial blood into the Holy of Holies and sprinkled it on the Mercy Seat, the Book of Hebrews reminds us: “Into the second [part of the Tabernacle] only the high priest enters once a year, not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the sins of the people committed in ignorance.” Hebrews 9:6-7

 

We find such assurances also in the fourth and fifth chapters of Leviticus. The psalmist likewise addresses sins committed in ignorance when he writes: “Who can discern his errors? Acquit me of hidden faults.  Also keep back Your servant from presumptuous sins; Let them not rule over me; Then I will be blameless, and I shall be acquitted of great transgression.” (Psalm 19:12-13)

 

All of this, and so much more in God’s word, obviates completely, it fully erases the supposed necessity, of Purgatory for the cleansing of sins – even those sins of which we are unaware. God’s word will forever supplant the traditions and the arguments of apologists and theologians.

 

Well, all of that is my introduction to today’s message – a rather long introduction, yes, but necessary because I want to set the proverbial stage for what now follows.

 

My text for today is from Romans 4:4ff “Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due. But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing on the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works: (And here, Paul quotes from Psalm 32): Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven, and whose sins have been covered. “Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account.”

 

I’ve spoken of this many times in the past decade that I’ve been your pastor, and I will speak of it many more times in the future as the Lord gives me opportunity because biblical truth simply cannot be overstated or overworn.

 

So, David wrote: “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven, and whose sins have been covered. “Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account.”

Many of you remember the context of David’s two psalms – the 51^st and the 32^nd. After his adultery with Bathsheba and her subsequent pregnancy, David attempted to cover-up his sin by having her husband, Uriah, killed in battle. When the prophet Nathan accused him of doing what he did, David knew that according to God's law, there was no sacrifice he could have made that would have washed away his damnable sins. Death by stoning was the only possible option for God’s justice under the Mosaic Law.

But when David confessed his sins, Nathan told David: “The Lord also has taken away your sin; you shall not die.” (2 Samuel 12:13) In other words, God said to David through the prophet, “I forgive you.”

David wrote those two psalms in the aftermath of his confession and God’s subsequent remission of his sins. Listen to this text from Psalm 51: “Be gracious to me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; According to the greatness of Your compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against You, You only, I have sinned and done what is evil in Your sight, so that You are justified when You speak and blameless when You judge.”

We don’t know how much longer it was after he wrote the 51^st psalm that he wrote the 32nd, but the text Paul cited in his letter to the Christians at Rome is from that 32^nd psalm: “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven, and whose sins have been covered. “Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account.”

I wonder if we hear it often enough – God is a God who loves to forgive sinners. He loves to wipe clean our sins. Listen to this representative Old Testament text from the prophet Ezekiel:  “Now as for you, son of man, say to the house of Israel, ‘Thus you have spoken, saying, “Surely our transgressions and our sins are upon us, and we are rotting away in them; how then can we survive?”’ Say to them, ‘As I live!’ declares the Lord God, ‘I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways! Why then will you die, O house of Israel?’ (Ezekiel 33:10-11)

Yes, God LOVES to forgive the truly penitent, and I think now of the adulteress in John 8, waiting to be stoned for her sin. Many of you remember the story. After the religious leaders left one by one, Jesus said to her: “I do not condemn you, either. Go. From now on sin no more.” (John 8:11)

In other words, as Paul wrote to the Christians at Rome – and by extension, the Christians at Ashwood Meadows: “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (Romans 8:1-4)

No wonder Paul also wrote to the Christians at Galatia: It was for [such] freedom that Christ set you free; Therefore, keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery. (Galatians 5:1)

I think it can also be said that we ought not place on ourselves the yoke of guilt for repented sins washed thoroughly by the blood of Jesus. Surely, “The sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death.” 2 Corinthians 7:10

Think for a moment about the penitent thief on the cross next to Jesus. When he asked the Lord to remember him when He came into His kingdom, the Lord Jesus promised him: “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:43). In other words, Jesus told him, “I forgive you. It’s done. Your past will no longer be held against you. You have a clean slate.”

It’s the same thing He tells you who confess and repent of your sins. “I forgive you. It’s done. Your past will no longer be held against you. You have a clean slate.”

Murderers, adulterers, thieves, liars, blasphemers – the list goes on and on throughout the Bible and Church history right up to this day in 2026. To every penitent – EVERY penitent, the Savior promises: “I forgive you.” It’s done. Your past can no longer be held against you. You have a clean slate.”

And by the way, that clean slate is exactly what justification means: being declared righteous by God. It is what forgiveness—called remission in some translations—means: God treats those sins as though they had never been committed.

To me, that means whatever I’ve done in my life – and I’ve done so many horribly wicked things in my life – the Almighty Judge of all the earth will never hold any of those sins against me because Jesus atoned for my sins, and with that atonement brought me eternal justification, forgiveness, and remission of those sins.

And He has done the same thing for each of you here who have confessed your sins to Him – the big ones and the so-called little ones. Your faith in Christ’s atonement has resulted forever in eternal justification, forgiveness, remission of those sins.

To shout ‘hallelujah’ seems somehow too anemic a response from we who have been redeemed, cleansed, reborn by and through the blood of the Lamb.

Did you ever think how hurtful it is to God who tells you that you are forgiven and we respond in unbelief? Did you ever consider how it must grieve the Father when we say – out loud or in our hearts – I can’t be fully forgiven unless I suffer in some way for my sins – even when You say they’re forgiven.

It’s like when we had small children in the house, four or five-year-olds who did something wrong, stole a cookie from the cookie jar or some such thing, and then, feeling guilty, apologized. And so, we took them around and told them we forgive them, everything is okay now.

But how do you think you’d have felt if for days, weeks, even months the child lived under a shadow of guilt, not believing he’d been forgiven, that you really didn’t mean it when you told him all was okay now?

In an infinitesimally small way, isn’t that how it is with our Father in heaven? We’ve done wrong, we feel guilty about the wrong and we’ve confessed and repented before God who then tell us we are forgiven. He tells us the sins are forgotten. He tells us those sins are purged from His memory, as Scripture repeatedly assures us. And yet some of us live days and weeks and months and even years under the shadow of that guilt.

That’s why the terrible invention of purgatory is so popular amongst so many people because they don’t believe the Father when He says they are forgiven, that the sin is forgotten, that it has been purged from His memory.

Let me remind us of the passage in Luke 18:16-17. Jesus told His disciples, “Permit the children to come to Me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all.”

Why is that? One reason might be because little children trust what their parents tell them. And so to the adults in this sanctuary, including myself, God help us to become as a child and trust what the father says.

CS Lewis’ comment about this issue is right on the mark: “I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise, it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him.”

In 2005, David Phelps and Kyle Matthew wrote the song Gentle Savior. Listen to some of the lyrics: “Why can’t I walk away from my regrets/And why is forgiveness so hard to accept/My past surrounds me like a house I can’t afford/But You say, "Come with me, don’t live there anymore"/Gentle Savior, lead me on/Let Your Spirit light the way/Gentle Savior, lead me on/Hold me close and keep me safe/Lead me on, gentle Savior.”

You might remember what God said to Peter that day he was waiting for his companions to prepare lunch. Luke tells us that while he was praying on the rooftop of the home he fell into a trance “and he saw the sky opened up, and an object like a great sheet coming down, lowered by four corners to the ground, and there were in it all kinds of [unclean according to the Law of Moses] four-footed animals and crawling creatures of the earth and birds of the air. A voice came to him, “Get up, Peter, kill and eat!” But Peter said, “By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything unholy and unclean.” Again, a voice came to him a second time, “What God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy.” This happened three times, and immediately the object was taken up into the sky.” Acts 10:9-16

What did Peter do after the Lord told him, “What the Lord has cleansed, no longer call unholy, or unclean”? He brought the gospel message to Gentiles – a nation he formerly considered unclean – and they believed the gospel.

My brothers and sister, it does no violence to the whole of Scripture to extrapolate from the Lord’s comment about unclean food to say, “Whatever sin God has cleansed through your repentance and faith in Christ, no longer consider yourself unclean.”

Listen, please to this application: We cannot hope to effectively tell others that THEIR sins can be forever gone if we don’t believe it of our own confessed sins.

Let me close this message this way. As I prepared this message I had an imaginary conversation with the Lord about my past sins. It went something like this:

“Lord, do you remember when I did that terrible thing?

He said, “No, I don’t.”

I pressed the point: “But, Lord, you must remember that day and who I was with. The memory resurfaces time to time. It was a horrible thing I did.”

And God responded, “No, I don’t remember. You confessed that sin to me a long time ago and I promised to forget what you did. I promised to wipe that sin from your account. I promised to never again remember it. I promised to cast it as far as east is from the west, and I always keep my promises.”

 

God has promised you the same as He promised me – to forget your confessed sins. Listen to this last text for today, this one from Jeremiah:

 

“I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people . . . [and] I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” (Jeremiah 31:33-34)

 

Christian: Be at peace. Live for Christ with a conscience cleansed by the blood of Jesus.

 

Amen

Effective Evangelism

 

The last thing Jesus said to His disciples before His ascension was: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:19-20

 

Let me repeat a portion of this text for emphasis. Jesus commanded, “Go and make disciples of all nations.” By definition, a disciple of Christ is one who obediently follows the Master and assists Him in spreading the gospel message. A disciple is one who, as the prophet Isaiah wrote: (Isaiah 52:7) “How lovely on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news,
Who announces peace . . . who announces salvation.”

 

So, the focus of my message today addresses the question, how might we be effective evangelists for Christ, effective sharers of the good news of salvation? To answer that question, let’s look at our primary text for today in Paul’s first letter to the Christians at Corinth.

 

(1 Corinthians 3:9-15) “For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building. According to the grace of God which was given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another is building on it. But each man must be careful how he builds on it. For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.”

 

It should be clear from this text that Paul is using the construction of a house as an analogy to our working together with God to build the kingdom of God. In his analogy, Paul makes at least two points germane to our effectiveness as evangelists, as co-workers with God in building His kingdom. The first point: Jesus and only Jesus is the foundation of God’s kingdom. The second point: Be careful what materials we use in our construction.

 

Let’s spend some time with that first point – Jesus is the only foundation of the house, which is also called the Church – meaning the people of God as one Body with Christ. The Church, according to Scripture, is not a building or even a denomination. It is Christ’s body with Him as the head. Here is  Colossians 1:17-18 “He [Christ] is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything.” 

 

That Christ is the foundation of the true Church is immutably central to saving faith. But it’s crucial we understand that foundation is the Jesus as described in the Bible, not the Jesus of our own making. The Jesus of the Bible is much more than a gentle Lamb; He is also a consuming fire. Listen to the apostle John’s description of Christ:

 

Revelation 1:14ff “His head and His hair were white like white wool, like snow; and His eyes were like a flame of fire. ¹⁵ His feet were like burnished bronze, when it has been made to glow in a furnace, and His voice was like the sound of many waters. ¹⁶ In His right hand He held seven stars, and out of His mouth came a sharp two-edged sword; and His face was like the sun shining in its strength. ¹⁷ When I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man.” 

 

Paul – indeed, all the New Testament writers – write about the Jesus through whom alone the world was created. If you know your Bible well, you know the New Testament writers speak of the Jesus who is Almighty God incarnate in the form of a man. They write of the Jesus who is the only door to eternal life, which means that everyone – Jew, Muslim, Hindu, atheist, agnostic – even Catholic or Protestant – who denies the Jesus of the Bible is self-condemned and unavoidably doomed to an eternity in the Lake of Fire.

 

That might seem a harsh statement, but it is a harsh reality for all who follow the Jesus of their own desires instead of the Jesus of Scripture.

 

The New Testament writers tell us about the Jesus who demands obedience to His all His Commandments. They do NOT write about the Jesus who is updated with every century or in some cases with every decade to fit in with the culture. Such satanic-birthed lies are evidenced all around us. Just think of the churches you may have attended for a while, or heard about or read about where, for example, same-sex marriage is promoted, or abortion is an acceptable means of birth control. Whether in Catholic churches or Protestant, such evil is sweeping across pulpits and pews.

 

For example, you might have read a recent news article about Yvette Flunder, the lesbian pastor of the City of Refuge United Church of Christ in Oakland, California. She contends that the Bible needs a third Testament because she doesn’t agree with the Scriptures that address sexual immorality.

 

No, the Jesus of the Bible demands repentance from sin, a repentance which must always lead to a turning from that sin. If our repentance is not accompanied by a commensurate intent to turn from that sin, then that repentance is a worthless in God’s sight – to whom we all will give an account at the Judgement.

 

Listen to CS Lewis speak to this point about sin and repentance: “We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. I have heard others, and I have heard myself, recounting cruelties and falsehoods committed in boyhood as if they were no concern of the present speaker’s and even with laughter.  But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin. The guilt is washed out not by time but by repentance and the blood of Christ: if we have repented these early sins we should remember the price of our forgiveness and be humble.” C. S. Lewis

 

So, to not belabor the crucial point, the Jesus of the Bible is the only foundation God provides us upon which to build our lives AND to build His Church. Which now brings us to the second point, the second element of effective evangelism. With Christ as the foundation of the Church, we must be meticulously alert to the materials we use to build on that foundation.

 

Again, here is Paul in our text: Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.” (1 Corinthians 3:12-15)

 

God separates into two categories what we use in our building His Kingdom, in sharing the gospel with others. The first category are things of value and permanence such as gold, silver, and precious stones. The things of inferior quality, things perishable, things cobbled together, He categorizes as wood, hay, and straw.

 

Many of you remember the fable of the Three Pigs and the Wolf. Three little pigs went out into the world to seek their fortunes. The first pig built his house of straw, the second from sticks, the third with bricks. One day a hungry wolf came along and demanded of the first pig: “Let me in! Let me in!”  The pig refused and said, “Not by the hairs on my chinny chin chin!”

 

So, the wolf huffed and puffed and blew the straw house down, forcing the pig to flee to his brother’s house made of sticks.

 

The wolf followed and said to the second pig, “Let me in! Let me in!” When the second pig refused, the wolf huffed and puffed and blew down the house of sticks. Then both pigs ran to the third pig’s house made of bricks. When the wolf demanded, “Let me in! Let me in!” the three pigs refused.  But this time, although the wolf huffed and puffed, he couldn’t blow the brick house down and the pigs were safe.

 

I hope the point of the fable is clear as it relates to building God’s house, God’s kingdom. So, what constitutes inferior and temporary materials that will be burned up at the Judgment, and what constitutes valuable and durable materials that will last into eternity?

 

Poor motives certainly qualify as inferior building materials. Why do we do what we do, say what we say, go where we go?  Is it for self-aggrandizement, or is it to point others to Jesus? The Lord Jesus addressed this question in His sermon on the mount when He said, “Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:1)

 

And Matthew 6:2-4 “So when you give to the poor, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be honored by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.” 

 

For good reason the Scriptures warn, “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; Who can understand it? I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give to each man according to his ways,
according to the results of his deeds.” (Jeremiah 17:9-10)

 

We can EASILY deceive ourselves into believing our motivations are admirable. But as Solomon also warned: (Proverbs 16:2) “All the ways of a man are clean in his own sight, But the Lord weighs the motives.”

 

A note of encouragement here: The Holy Spirit will not allow the honest Christian, the one who truly seeks the please God, to remain unaware of his or her impure motives. James tells us: “But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.” (James 1:5) In other words, if we want to serve and to build with pure motives, we only need to ask God to reveal to us our true motives; and if He shows us what we are doing is rooted in self, we merely need to repent and ask Him to change our hearts. It’s really that simple.

 

The essential point here is that whatever we do for the Lord as we co-labor with Him in building His kingdom must be done from pure motives if we hope to build with valuable and permanent materials. (1 Peter 4:11) “Whoever speaks,” the apostle Peter wrote, “is to do so as one who is speaking the utterances of God; whoever serves is to do so as one who is serving by the strength which God supplies; so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.”

 

Compromise is another perishable and worthless material that will be burned up at the Judgment. When we speak the good news with others, are we more concerned about offending them by speaking truth, or by offending God by not speaking it?

A pastor in this town told me he doesn’t speak about abortion because he doesn’t want to offend anyone in this congregation. Another pastor in this town joked from the pulpit that he wouldn’t speak about the Biblical directives of how wives must be submissive to their husbands. Why? I can only speculate it was because he didn’t want to offend the women in the congregation.

 

It is the fear of offending congregations that many pastors compromise the hard truths, the inconvenient truths, the annoying truths of Scripture and won’t talk directly about sin but rather speak around those issues in the most general terms. It’s why many in the pew rarely if ever hear their pastor speak specifically about fornication, adultery, homosexuality, same-sex, marriage, transgenderism, and all the other demonic social ills sweeping across the Church.

 

Well, let’s start bringing this message to a close. We’ve looked VERY briefly at building materials of poor and transitory quality. There are others we could have examined, but I think you can extrapolate from what we’ve already seen to what other inferior materials might be. So now, let’s look at building materials of eternal value, what Paul spoke of as gold, silver, and precious jewels.

 

As we should expect, Scripture helps us here. Listen to Paul’s final words to Timothy – and by extension, to us: “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. ³ For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, ⁴ and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.” (2 Timothy 4:2-4).

 

In other words, tell other about the Jesus of the Bible, without compromise and without seeking either praise or reward. 

 

Listen now to Peter: (1 Peter 3:15) “Sanctify [set apart] Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence.”

 

In other words, living holy lives has eternal value. We cannot hope to effectively tell others of Jesus if we ourselves do not openly and consistently seek to obey Jesus.

 

Another valuable material for building on the foundation of Christ is our maturing in Christ. What we do not want to find ourselves as those to whom Hebrews was written: “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant.” (Hebrews 5:12)

 

How does a child of God mature? I hope we all know the answer to that – study God’s word: “Like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation.”  And be consistent in prayer –“But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit. (Jude 1:20);

And routinely fellowship with other Christians, “Not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.”

 

“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:19-20

 

We cannot effectively make disciples unless we build on the foundation of the Jesus of Scripture and with valuable and permanent materials.

 

On October 12, 2019, the Hard Rock Hotel in New Orleans partially collapsed, killing three. Investigations found weak structural elements and questionable material quality.

 

In 2021, in a suburb of Miami, the South Champlain Towers collapsed, killing 98 people. Investigators linked the disaster to the poor quality concrete used in the tower’s construction.

 

Too much is at stake – ETERNITY is at stake – for us to cheat the Lord, to cheat ourselves, and to cheat others by not, for any reason, building Christ’s kingdom according to His blueprints.

 

 

Second-Class Children

 

Frenchie, our Bichon Friese, loves to curl up next to me while I’m watching television or typing on my laptop. On the other hand, Happy Bear, our Pomeranian, usually stays across the room on the carpet as Frenchie cuddles next to me. I can’t help but melt when I see him looking at me, his front legs tucked under his muzzle and his coal-black eyes staring mournfully at me as if to say, “Don’t you want me to be next to you, also?”

Of course I do. So, I get up, gently carry him to the couch and lay him on my chest. Invariably, Happy takes a deep sigh, rests his muzzle on my thigh, and falls asleep as I continue watching television. Those who own dogs or cats know it just doesn’t get any better than that.

I suppose I could be accused of anthropomorphizing our dogs, associating human characteristics to them. But it happens nearly 100% of the time when Frenchie is curled up next to me and I have to gather Happy Bear to be with us on the couch.

 

I use that image to try to illustrate an important point about God and His children who have come to Him by faith in His Son, Jesus Christ.

One day recently, when Happy was looking desolately at Frenchie and me, a thought dropped into my head. How many Christians feel like they’re less loved than others in God’s family?

 

In the past half-century that I’ve walked with the Lord, I’ve met many Christians who, like Happy Bear, think of themselves as second-class children of God, as if the Father prefers to snuggle up with others of His children but remains distant to them.

 

What a tragedy it is to believe God plays favorites among His own children. We’ll find NOTHING of that in the whole of Scripture. Indeed, we find quite the opposite. For example, listen to James speak to that false idea: (James 2:9) "But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors." Or this text in Proverbs 28:21 – “To show partiality is not good, because for a piece of bread a man will transgress.” And since God warns us against showing partiality to others, do we think He violates His own commandment? Of course not!

 

Now hear our Lord Jesus speak: John 16:27 “For the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came forth from the Father.”  Listen to the apostle John: (1 John 3:1) “See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are.”

 

These texts, and every one like them, are not directed at the few of God’s children, or even to the many. They are directed to 100% of them. Why do you think Jesus spoke of the Good Shepherd who left the 99 to look for the one? It’s because He loves the one as much as the 99.

 

Some of you might remember the Smothers’ Brothers Comedy Hour. The audience roared with laughter when Tommy complained to his brother Dick, “Mom always liked you best.”

 

But it’s never funny when such things are true in a family, as happens far too often even in Christian families, when a child feels his parent cares more for a sibling than for him or her. And such poisonous relationships hold within themselves the seeds of family discord and destruction.

 

Think for a moment about how it turned out for Isaac and Rebecca’s sons – Jacob and Esau. Jacob knew their father cared more for Esau than for him, and Esau could easily sense their mother cared more for Jacob than him.

 

AND how did that all turn out? If you know the story, Esau’s progeny remained at war with Jacob’s progeny for generations. It’s all recorded in Genesis and throughout the Old Testament when the writers talk about Edom – another name for Esau. In fact, Herod Antipas – ruler over Israel in the days of John the Baptist and Jesus the Christ – was of Edomite (Idumean) descent.

 

The sin of favoritism carried over to Jacob’s children. Jacob made it no secret that he cared more for his son Joseph than he did for his other eleven sons. They, in turn, were so jealous of Joseph that they sold him into Egyptian slavery and let their father, Jacob, believe a wild beast had killed him.

 

So, what does all this have to do with us in 2026? I know that kind of destructive favoritism happens in a lot of families. And it should not be surprising when a Christian who comes from such a family carries that hurt into their relationship with God, thinking God doesn’t love them like He loves others. It’s not surprising that they think of themselves as second-class children in the family of God.

 

Some of you may come from families like that, which is why you’re not absolutely convinced that your Father in heaven loves you equally as he loves the person sitting next to you.

 

Oh! But He does. God is Love itself (1 John 4:8,16). He’s the very essence of love. There is no part of Him that is not 100% love. Therefore, it’s impossible that He would be partial to any of His children. In fact, Jesus Himself tells us that the Father loves EVERY child in His family as much as He loves His Son, Jesus. I won’t read it now but look at John 17:23 later for homework and you’ll find that inviolable assurance.

 

I repeat that last statement for emphasis: God’s love for you is the same length and depth and height and breadth as is His love for Jesus. My brothers and sisters in Christ, I hope the Scripture once and for all puts to rest the lie about God’s alleged favoritism.

 

And that brings us to another, yet related, question: Can we do anything that will make God love any of us less? To answer that question, let’s look again at God’s infallible words to us and first ask: What did you do to make Him love you in the first place?

 

The answer is – nothing. As God tells us through Paul’s pen: (Ephesians 2:1-2) “You were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.”

 

Please hear this: Before God called you to Himself, you were dead. D-E-D dead. And dead people can’t do anything to make someone else love them. Therefore, that means God loved you before He even drew you to Himself. God loved you as much as He does now, even when you were dead in your sins.  As the apostle wrote to the Christians at Rome: “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

 

So, then, And again, (Galatians 3:3) “Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?”

 

So to answer that question, “Can we DO anything that will make God love any of us less – or more?” The answer is, of course, a resounding no. God loves you today as much as He has ever loved you. And the height and depth and breadth and length of His love for any and every one of His children through Christ will always be equal to His love for Jesus.

 

Period. End of story.

 

But despite that Biblical truth, some still argue, “Then why do such bad things happen to me while other Christians live such easy lives?”

 

Okay, fair question. My answer?  I don’t really know. I’ve asked the same question myself at times. But let’s turn again to God’s infallible words to us and see if we can’t draw some conclusions.

 

For example, listen to Romans 5:1-5 “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God. And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and  perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”

 

I do not know why some Christians seem to float along gently flowing streams of life while others often struggle with loss and pain and heartache. But I do know this, based on the whole testimony of Scripture – God does not love any less the one who struggles than the one who floats nearly effortlessly. AND – and this is important – God uses all of our trials and failures and broken hearts and shattered dreams – He uses them all for our GOOD who have been called to His divine purposes.

 

Furthermore, and intricately coupled to that truth, we also need to be reminded of this divine and binding promise: Nothing will separate us from His love. Nothing – except, of course, ongoing willful sin.

 

Listen again to the Scriptures: Romans 8:35-39 “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, “For Your sake we are being put to death all day long; We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

 

And I say it again for emphasis – this promise is not for only some, or even for most, of God’s children. This promise applies to 100% of those who have entered God’s family through repentance and obedient faith in Christ Jesus.

 

I hope that now we are all on the same proverbial sheet of music, that being, God does not play favorites with any of His children, and that He equally loves each of us as much as He loves His Son, Jesus.

 

I also hope that we all believe that there is NOTHING we can do to make God love us less than He does, or more than He does right now. And finally, although we will never fully understand why some Christians seem to float through life on gentle streams while others move from one tumultuous series of rapids to another – the truth is that God uses every circumstance in our lives for our ultimate good.

 

The 23^rd psalm is not a promise only for a few of God’s children. The promise of the psalm applies equally to 100% of His children: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me; Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

 

Now then, as I begin to bring this message to a close, let’s change our focus 180° and ask a pointed question most Christians rarely ask themselves. Instead of wondering how much God loves me and you, let’s turn it around and ask ourselves how much do we love God? Instead of asking, ‘Does God love me less He loves others, let’s ask ourselves, “Do I love God less than I love myself?” Do I love God less than I love my comfort, or my family, or my friends, or my finances, or my entertainment, or living life ‘your way,’  . . . or whatever.

 

Said another way, “Do I love anyone or anything more than I love God?

 

That’s a question worthy of long and careful consideration. And that question raises another yet question: What is the test of my degree of love for God?

 

The answer to that question is easy when we look into the Scriptures, all of which serve as a mirror of our hearts. As the Holy Spirit tells us: (Hebrews 4:12-13) “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.”

 

What is the test of my degree of love for God? Listen to Jesus: “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” (John 14:15) And again, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon” – or anything else, for that matter. (Matthew 6:24)

 

In other words, to the degree that I obey God is the degree to which I love Him. Now, let me pause to make an important point: No one has ever served God with 100% obedience 100% of the time. That’s why Scripture repeatedly tells us, for example, (Romans 3:23) “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God;” And (1 John 1:8) “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.” 

 

That’s why God’s gift of forgiveness to the penitent is so incredibly wondrous. But his willingness to forgive our sins does not nullify our responsibility to demonstrate our love for God by making the correct choice between two masters – ourselves or God. It does not abrogate our responsibility to demonstrate our love for God by doing His will instead of our own.

So, please, my brothers and sisters, for the sake of your spiritual health and maturity in Christ, let’s stop entertaining the question of whether God loves you as much as He loves someone else. Let’s stop acting like my Pomeranian who seems to think I love our Bichon more than I love him. From Genesis through Revelation, God has answered the question of His equally measureless love for all His children, regardless of and despite their individual life circumstances. God has revealed to us through His infallible words that He loves equally all who name the name of Jesus as their Lord.

 

Let’s leave off with such questions which all have their yes and amen in Christ. Instead, let’s ask ourselves – often ask ourselves – the more relevant question: Do I love God less than I love something or someone else? And if the answer is not what it should be – then ask what must be done about that.

 

Repent, of course. And ask God to change our hearts toward more confidence in His promises and to be more consistently obedient to His will.