Good and Bad in the Happy Kingdom

I was worthless, vile, soiled, polluted.  I was dead in iniquities.

Before thee I am nothing but vanity, iniquity.  May I, a convinced and self-despairing sinner, find Jesus as the power unto salvation.

I deplore my my own foolish maliciousness.  I live in contempt, anger, malice, self-sufficiency…

Before thy cross I kneel and see the heinousness of my sin, my iniquity, my evil.

I have destroyed myself, my nature is defiled, the powers of my soul are degraded; I am vile, miserable, strengthless…

The sentences above come from Puritan’s prayers, found in the book The Valley of Vision.

Before we can be fully happy enjoying the Lord’s love, we need to be fully aware of the depths of our wickedness apart from Christ.  Before we can rise to the heights of joy in God, we need to know the depths of the sin that we were in.  Before we can fly like eagles in glory, we must realize what a bunch of turkeys we are without Jesus.

The Happy Kingdom of God is made up wholly of broken, twisted, sin-bent, hurting, vile, wicked, alienated people who have been bought, forgiven, redeemed, rescued and restored by the blood of Christ that dripped from Calvary’s cursed tree.  That’s why it’s such a happy place.

Salvation is more than being saved from Satan.  Salvation is more than being saved from a depraved world.  Salvation is mostly about being saved from ourselves.  There are a lot of people who don’t think they need saving from themselves.  They think they are pretty good people.  They don’t murder, steal, rape or pillage.  They give to charities and help the poor.  Some even attend religious/spiritual services and occasionally read religious/spiritual books that help them to do religious/spiritual acts of goodness.  They are pretty OK, they think.  Don’t need all that Jesus stuff.  Don’t need to be saved.

They need to read  Romans 3 to get a glimpse of what God thinks about them-

“There is no one righteous, not even one;

there is no one who understands;

there is no one who seeks God.

 All have turned away, they have together become worthless;

there is no one who does good, not even one.”

There throats are open graves;

their tongues practice deceit.”

“Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”

“Their feet are swift to shed blood;

ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know.”

Before we can appreciate, rejoice and live in the Good News, we must realize the truth of the Bad News of who we really are without God.  Before we can glorify God and enjoy Him forever, we have to know the extent to which we despise God and hate Him.  It is only when He enlightens the eyes of our heart (Ephesians 1:17-18) that we can understand that we are bound by the chains of wicked evilness and reach out for a Savior full of grace and mercy and live lives of Joy and Gladness in His Happy Kingdom.  God give us that enlightenment.