“This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” Romans 3:22-24 NIV
In these 3 verses in Romans, Paul is writing to the Christians in Rome, and he is explaining that we are all on the same level as far as God is concerned, it didn’t matter who they were, Jew or Gentile, they all had the same condition, a sinful nature. It doesn’t matter who we are, we ALL are born with a sinful nature. We all miss the mark of favor from God and approval of God.
‘We all start at the same place’ gives me comfort. This helps me to remember that I am no better than anyone else. It would not matter if I was a different nationality, if I was born into a family with money or if I was born into a family with nothing, we all start at the place of being a sinner. We are all born into sin, every one of us, not one of us is born without sin and we can move from there.
To be a Christian, we have to understand that our sin blocks us from interacting with God and from being with God. Once we accept and admit we are a sinner, we can move. We can move closer to being able to acknowledging that we need saved. At this point hopefully our hearts are more open to hearing about how much God loves us and what Jesus did for us than when we were thinking we could save ourselves.
We all start at the same place but we don’t all remain there. Accepting and acknowledging we are sinners is where we need to be to move forward with exploring a relationship with Jesus.
Have you moved from that place where you started?