For whoever finds me, finds life,
and will obtain favor from the LORD.
But he who sins against me wrongs his own soul.
All those who hate me love death.
(Proverbs 8:35-36)
If we don’t accept Jesus, we hurt our own soul and perish in death. The good news leads us to seek God and find life. Believe in your heart that Christ died for your sin.
“And by the law almost all things are made clean with blood, and without blood there is no forgiveness.” (see Hebrews 9:22 BBE) Christ shed His blood for you and me and rose to life on the third day, giving us life and thus favor. We received mercy, but without Christ, what we deserved was punishment for our sins. Instead we received grace, simply because we chose to believe that Christ died and paid the price in full for our sins. When we accept by faith that we are a sinner and receive Jesus as Savior and believe that He paid the debt we owe, we are forgiven and adopted into God’s family and become His children.
God’s favor is for a lifetime. (see Psalm 30:5). Receiving eternal life is favor when we recive God’s gift of grace. God’s love and His gift of eternal life is not withdrawn once we have accepted Christ as our Savior. The first step is to receive Christ as your Savior. I received Him as my Savior and He is the love of my life and my greatest joy.
Your prayer may be like this: Jesus I confess that I have sinned. I desire for You to control my life and I surrender all of me, all I do, and all I have to You. I believe You died on the cross for me and paid in full the debt I owe for my sins, so my sins would be forgiven past, present, and future. I believe You rose on the third day. Thank You Lord that I now have eternal life and I am adopted into Your family forever. Thank You Jesus for clothing me in Your righteousness, as I have none on my own. ( see Isaiah 61:10) God sees me and you through the righteousness Jesus won for us by shedding His blood and by dying on the cross at Calvary.
I am putting 100% of my faith into what Jesus did for me on the cross and not in any good deeds that I have done. If I think my good deeds will earn my entrance into Heaven, then I’m trusting in my own righteousness to make myself acceptable to God. This is what it means when someone is called “self righteous” versus being righteous because of what Christ has done for us.
Isaiah suggests this about our good deeds: But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousness’s are as filthy rags.
(See Isaiah 64:6 KJV)