God's Single Standard

We live in a world of cutting corners. Recently, I saw a satirical post that showed a woman getting to the checkout line at the grocery store and quickly peeling all of her bananas before placing them in a produce bag, thus paying only for the part of the fruit she was going to eat. (In return, the cashier proceeded to then crack all of the customer's eggs....)

We only want to pay for what we're going to use. We don't want to pay surcharges and upcharges and weights of the disposable parts. And I get it, especially in today's economy. 

But did you know that God has always been concerned with this, too? 

The Bible repeatedly tells us that God hates dishonest weights and measures. (Proverbs 20:10, for example.) God hates it when we're cheating each other. He hates it when we're trying to get more and pay less...or when we're trying to pay less and charge more. 

Did you know that He hates it just as much when we aren't talking about commerce?

Our God is the God of a single standard. One rule. One expectation. And we have all failed to meet it. That's what the New Testament means when it says that all have sinned and fallen short and that there is no one righteous, not even one. 

Every single one of us has exactly the same standard to meet: holiness. And every single one of us has failed miserably to meet it. And every single one of us requires the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross to make up the difference for us. 

We like to think that some of us need more of Christ and some of us need less of Christ. We like to think that some of us are better at this holiness thing than others. We like to think that some of us are less sinful than others. 

But God has one standard. None of us has met it. So every single one of us needs exactly the same measure of Christ: 

All of Him. 

Period. 

Our reward might be different. Our judgment might be different. The measure of His grace poured out on us might be different. Each according to our need (as the Bible also says). But the measure of our salvation is all the same: it's the Cross.

Jesus did not die a little bit for you, a little more for me, a little more for someone else, just a tad for yet another person. He died a full and complete and total death for each and every single one of us. 

That is God's standard.