• In spiritual bondage. To live for anything else but God leads to breakdown and decay. When a fish leaves water, which he was built for, he is not free, but dead. Worshiping other things besides God leads to a loss of meaning. If we achieve these things, they cannot deliver satisfaction, because they were never meant to be gods. They were never meant to replace God. Worshiping other things besides God also leads to self-image problems. We end up defining ourselves in terms of our achievement in these things. We must have them or all is lost; so they drive us to work too hard, or they fill us with terror if they are jeopardized.

• Love and Justice. His active concern is for our joy and well-being. Most people love those who love them, yet God seeks the good even of people who are His enemies. But because God is good and loving, He cannot tolerate evil. The opposite of love is not anger but indifference. The more you love your son, the more you hate in him the liar, the drunkard, the traitor. (E. Gifford). To imagine God's situation, imagine a judge who also is a father, who sits at the trial of his guilty son. A judge knows that he cannot let his son go, for without justice no society can survive. How much less can a loving God merely ignore or suspend justice for us who are loved, yet guilty of rebellion against His loving authority?
• Jesus Christ. Jesus is God Himself come to Earth. He first lived a perfect life, loving God with all His heart, soul and mind, fulfilling all human obligation to God. He lived the life you owed a perfect record. Then, instead of receiving his deserved reward (eternal life), Jesus gave his life as a sacrifice for our sins, taking the punishment and death each of us owed. When we believe in Him:
  
  • Our sins are paid for by his death, and
    
  • His perfect record is transferred to our account. So God accepts and regards us as if we have done all Christ has done.

3. What you must do:

• Repent. There first must be an admission that you have been living as your own master, worshipping the wrong things, violating Gods loving laws. Repentance means you ask forgiveness and turn from that stance with a willingness to live for and center on Him.
  
• Believe. Faith is transferring trust from your own efforts to the efforts of Christ. You were relying on other things to make you acceptable, but now you consciously rely on what Jesus did for your acceptance with God. All you need is nothing. If you think God owes me something for all my efforts, you are still on the outside.
  
• Pray after this fashion: I see I am more flawed and sinful than I ever dared to believe, but that I am more loved and accepted than I ever dared hope. I turn from my old life of living for myself. I have nothing to merit you're approval, but I now rest in what Jesus did and I ask to be accepted into God's family for His sake." When you make this transaction, two things happen at once:
  • Your accounts are cleared; your sins are wiped out permanently, you are adopted legally into God's family, and
  • The Holy Spirit enters your heart and begins to change you into the character of Jesus.