All of us tend to think of ourselves as good persons.  This assessment is largely true.  All of us are capable of, and often do many good things.  But if we’re honest with ourselves, this isn’t the whole story.  All of us are equally capable of evil, even if we are unequally guilty of evil.  Sure, you and I are not as bad as Joseph Stalin or Adolf Hitler.  Compared to them we are saints, relatively speaking.  But how do we stack up when compared to God?

God is a morally perfect being.  He requires that we be morally perfect as well, and yet we aren’t.  Whether our acts of evil are big or small, many or few, they are all violations of God’s moral perfection, and these violations have consequences.  Even if you only committed one sin per day between the ages of six and 75, that adds up to more than 25,000 violations of God’s moral law!  If you were guilty of breaking that many human laws, no judge could ignore it.  How, then, can we expect the God of perfect justice to turn a blind eye to our moral failures?  While God is a God of love, He is also a God of justice and cannot ignore these violations.  Acts of moral evil are deserving of punishment (death), and no amount of good works we do can negate those acts.  That’s bad news for you and me!  But Christianity offers a solution, and hope.

While God’s justice demands punishment for sin, His infinite love desires mercy.  This presents a problem: How can God pardon us of our moral crimes without sacrificing His justice?  Someone needs to pay for the crimes we’ve committed against God.  If not us, then who?  This is where Jesus comes in.  To meet his own demand for justice, God took up a human existence in the face of Jesus Christ, and personally suffered the penalty for sin—death—on our behalf; the innocent suffering on behalf of the guilty.  He took on himself the punishment that was rightly ours, and in exchange gives us the righteousness that is rightly his…if we will entrust our lives to him.  No one else has done this for us.  This is why we must trust exclusively in Christ if we wish to receive forgiveness.  And this is why Christians proclaim your need for Jesus.

God has offered us a solution to our moral problem, but on His terms, not ours.  So now you have a choice.  If you accept what Christ did for you, trusting in His good works to save you rather than your own, then God will consider your moral debt as paid in full.  If you reject Christ, however, you will be rejecting the only solution to your guilt, and consequently must pay for your own crimes.  If you choose to stand before God based on the merits and demerits of your own works, surely you will face the judgment of God.  But if you choose to stand before God based on the merits of Christ’s work, however, you can expect mercy and grace.

So do you need Jesus?  If you are morally perfect, no.  But if you are like us, the answer is an emphatic yes.  What will you say to Christ, then?  How will you respond to what He has done for you?  The choice is simple; the choice is yours.