Otherwise Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.

Some people might ask: “I feel like I should try and pay God back for salvation, doesn’t that make sense?” Or another track might be: “Why is it fair that God offers salvation to all? Some people have hurt others too much to deserve salvation.”

These points are made from a stance of partial qualification. These people have a root desire to determine what right and wrong and fairness is in their own minds. The problem is that we live in a sinful world and, before Jesus, our hearts were corrupted by sin (which acts like a poison). This poison corrupts our thoughts and introduces deceptions and lies to justify our actions and make us feel good about ourselves.

But when we understand the utter depravity of our condition, having a heart controlled by sin, then we realize that we cannot tell God how he should behave. He is God and we are not. He created; he wrote the rules, and he gets to decide who qualifies for eternal life with him. God knows our hearts and what they are made of better than we do. And he knows how to heal them and set them free to live a life of righteousness.

And so he made one way to him for those like me, trapped in a life of sin and honest enough to admit it. This one way was to accept the redeeming sacrifice of Jesus Christ. We cannot earn this gift or qualify for it. We cannot compare ourselves to others and be good enough. It is a gift. In order to receive it, we must surrender.

What if you had cancer in your body and a renowned cancer surgeon knew how to cut it out and the process for you to heal. Would he let you come into his surgery center and tell him how he should and should not operate on you? No way! Why? Because we are not qualified to make those decisions.

In the same way, none of us are qualified to be an Almighty and Loving God either. He loves us because he is good. And he wants his goodness to heal us from the inside out. There is only one treatment that works for a sin-filled heart: the precious blood of Christ that cleanses our hearts, and his Spirit who he gives to true believers who surrender power and control to the Soul Healer.

Lord, thank you for doing “Open Heart Surgery”-type work on my soul. I surrender. I am broken and stuck in a life of sin without you. I will treat you as God and follow your lead wherever you take me!