A Man Walks into a Bar in Heaven-

How sufficient is the grace of God? For those who don't know, the grace of God is that bit of forgiveness he has for where your Do's are not greater than your Don't's. In other words, it is His forgiving your sins not because you do enough good stuff to erase the bad stuff. It is simply because the blood of Jesus Christ is sufficient as a sacrifice to pay for those sins. All of them. Forever.

How sufficient is the grace of God? I had an image in my mind of walking into a bar in Heaven. (The bar is symbolic; it's something that shouldn't be in Heaven according to traditional perspectives. Just run with this.) I see sitting at a table Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Billy Graham, and any Pope of your choice. (It is sad that I know the first names of two human monsters and not one name associated with a Pope.)

They are laughing and having some really good beer. It has to be good. This is Heaven. They invite me over to join them. What should I think? What should I do? Hitler and Stalin were rather nasty guys. They were responsible for a lot of people dying in rather unpleasant ways. Some of the Popes (sorry to all of you Pope fans) were not a lot better.

That's the question. (Billy Graham is there just to give some people a righteous dude they would expect to be there. By the way, he admitted to being a sinner.) Is the grace of God sufficient to pay for the sins of someone like Hitler? Most people, even people who don't give much credence to the idea of sin, would consider Hitler a really sinful sinner. His is a high-water mark of sin. Hard to beat, unless you are Genghis Khan or someone like that.

I say, yes. Sin is sin. A little or a lot, it demanded the death of Jesus Christ. Now for those who don't know, Jesus was without sin. The Son of God and all of that. He offered Himself as a substitute for each and every sinner. When it comes down to the whole sacrifice-for-sin thing, He did it for me. Me. My sin, as paltry as my sin may be on the Hitler scale, demanded the sacrifice of the sinless Son of God. And, He did it willingly.

How does this grace thing work? It is so simple that huge volumes of volumes have been written on the matter. You just believe. You believe enough to know that you rightly will stand before God as your judge. What will you plead? Guilty, of course. Then you simply state that you rely on the blood of Christ, and nothing else.

That's what I intend. I have nothing more to offer. Nothing else is sufficient. Nothing more is necessary. The blood of Christ, His voluntary sacrifice, is sufficient. The grace of God is sufficient. I depend upon it.

Who will be there in Heaven? Other than me, I don't really know. If they are redeemed by the blood of Jesus, however, I will certainly be glad to sit down and have a beer with them.

Will there be beer there? Of course. Beer, and really good sandwiches.

It's Heaven, don't you know?