God showed how much He loved people by sending Jesus Christ, His one and only Son, into the world as a sacrifice to take away our sins so we might have eternal life through Him—this is real love, not because we love Him, but because He loved us (1 John 4:9-10).
God showed His great love for us by sending Jesus Christ to die for us even while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8)—this sacrifice shows how God was being fair and demonstrating His righteousness when He held back and looked ahead in what He would have done in the past and the present time: punishing those who sin. On the other hand, He has declared those who believe in Jesus’ sacrificial death, shedding His blood, righteous with Him, thus freeing them from the penalty of sin (Romans 3:24-26). Since we who believed in Jesus Christ, God has reconciled us to Himself through Christ’s death in His physical body. As a result, God has brought us into His presence, where we stand holy and blameless without a single fault (Colossians 1:22). Since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, He will certainly save us from God’s condemnation. Furthermore, Jesus has restored our friendship with God and will save us through His life. Therefore, we can rejoice in our new relationship as God’s friends because of Jesus Christ, our Lord (Romans 5:9-10).
Since God sacrificed His Son, Jesus, to save us from condemnation, make us righteous, holy, and blameless, and restore our friendship with Him, we Christians must be willing to sacrifice our lives to Him. We sacrifice our lives to God by considering ourselves dead to the power of sin and alive to Him through Jesus Christ (Romans 6:12)—this means we do not give in to sinful desires, letting them control the way we live (Romans 6:13). Instead, we choose to obey God, which leads to righteous living (Romans 6:16), giving our bodies as a living and holy sacrifice to Him (Romans 12:1).
It is God’s will for the sacrifice of Jesus’ body to make us holy once and for all (Hebrews 10:10). Therefore, there is no longer any sacrifice to cover our sins if we deliberately keep sinning after we received the knowledge of the truth. Instead, it will be a terrible expectation of God’s judgment and a raging, consuming fire on us (Hebrews 10:26-27) because the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6:23).
Since we Christians have died from life on earth and raised to a new life hidden in Jesus Christ in heaven, where He sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand, we should put our sinful, earthly nature to death and sit our sights in the realities of heaven. We will share Christ’s glory when He reveals Himself to the world (Colossians 3:1-5)—Kenneth Sullivan. (I quoted all Scriptures in this document from the New Living Translation of the Holy Bible).