A few basics- God Himself says in Isaiah 1:18
“Come now, and let us reason together,”
Says the LORD,
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
They shall be as white as snow;
Though they are red like crimson,
They shall be as wool."
Sin simply means "falling short". Repent means, "turn around". At the beginning of the Bible, God only had one commandment, don't partake of the knowledge of good and evil. That doesn't mean just knowing the difference between them, it also means knowing how to do good and evil. Mankind didn't obey and opened a way for Satan to try to elevate himself to the status of god, demanding that mankind worship him, a counterfeit of God, the Creator of all things. The angry God of the Old Testament had clear reasons for His anger. His desire is that we, His Creation would chose to be close to Him, so He made a way for someone else to pay the price of our shortcomings allowing us to live in a restored relationship with Him. His Son, Jesus Christ, paid the debt for our falling short by dying in our place on a cross. Everything has wages, and by God's standards, the wages for falling short is death. We were created as eternal beings, without death we would live eternally in the fallen state of sin in decaying bodies. We don't have to do that, we can be restored to life as God intended it, by acknowledging that we have fallen short, that we need a savior, One who would stand in our place to pay a debt we can never afford, and calling on the name of that Savior, Jesus Christ to make us into a new creation in His image. Though we will continue to fall short in this lifetime as we follow the commandments of Jesus, to love each other as He loves us, and to love God, we have a sure promise of life eternally separated from sin in close proximity to the God who created us and loves us.
The Bible is not a word for word declaration of what God commands us to do, but is a declaration of examples of what mankind has done wrong over the ages in spite of God's presence, with God encouraging us to seek His wisdom over our own. Through it all, the theme is that though our temporary lives are surrounded by evil, our eternal existence doesn't have to be this way. By divine love, when this lifetime is over, we can either live in God's presence, or by our own chosing we can be eternally removed from His love. That is the definition of Heaven and Hell. Study to the Words of Life and chose wisely. Chose to be a follower of Jesus Christ. Time is short.
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