Christ Carries the Weight to Heaven

Too often, we look at sin as a simple setback. It's as if we can "Two steps forward, one step back" our way into heaven. When we look at it that way, repentance and forgiveness aren't much more than drawing the "Advance to go" Chance card in Monopoly, simply allowing us to get back to when we were perfect.

The bottom line is that no mortal has reached the standard of perfection demanded of Jesus of Nazareth in the Sermon on the Mount:

"Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" (Matthew 5:48).

That level of perfection does not come in an instant. It is not constantly attained each time we ask for forgiveness. It comes as a result of effort on our part, and our cooperation and agreement to the terms of the grace, justice, and mercy of God.

To illustrate the point I'm trying to make in a much more clear way, imagine your ship just went down, and you see an island off in the far distance. Naturally, you are going to swim with all your energy to get there. Perhaps if you are in the right condition, you could actually have the energy to make it!

Yet, for some reason, every now and then, you take a weight and tie it to the end of a rope; the other end of the rope is tied to you. Your swimming is going to get tougher and tougher, and is going to be utterly impossible. Try as you might, the weight is just going to be far too much, and you will be exhausted well before you can make it that ever-so-appealing island, where you can finally stay and rest.

That is what sin does to us. It weighs us down. It makes our progress all but impossible. Any progress we