falling short

"The king will mourn, the prince will be clothed with despair, and the hands of the people of the land will tremble. I will deal with them according to their conduct, and by their own standards I will judge them. Then they will know that I am the LORD."

-Ezekiel 7:27

I found this verse interesting this morning, along with chapters 6 and the rest of 7. It's all about God's destruction on Israel for their sin and idolatry. It's not just the actions of their sinning but their hearts - their "adulterous hearts" that turned away from the Lord and their "lust" for idolatry. I mean, I knew God took sin seriously - but somehow when He describes that kind of destruction it makes it seem more serious than saying "the wages of sin is death." Sure, death is awful - but when your idea of death is dying in your sleep, somehow torture, war, famine and plagues seem a bit worse.

In Romans 3:23 it says that "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (alex corley paraphrase-ish... look it up for word-for-word). Basically - we've missed the target completely according to God's standards of perfection. Isn't it interesting though, that in this verse in Ezekiel God says He'll judge the people by their own standards. Even then they've fallen completely short!

Not only have we missed the mark and failed at following the standards of a Holy God, we've fallen short of following our own standards perfectly. In other words - it doesn't matter what our excuses are or what we believe about the existence of a God - even for those who don't know His word or have it to obey will be judged by how they followed the standards of their consciences... and even then we can't do that right!

I mean, if I say that one of the things I value is honesty and that I believe lying is wrong - the Honesty becomes a standard for me to follow. But what happens when I get caught in a sticky situation and end up lying? I've fallen short of my own standard of Honesty.

I just found it interesting. Even more interesting to see how much God hates sin, and how little I can identify with that feeling. But I want to - I want His heart.