This is my memory verse for the week. There are a few things this verse makes me aware of.

1) God has a standard. God is God and He is holy. Holiness means that He is altogether separate and different; without sin or imperfection. God’s standard is Himself.

2) There is something called “sin” which has caused us to come short of God’s standard. Being that God is perfect, sin would then be defined as imperfection; or more directly as “missing the mark”. It’s actually an archery term which means to miss the bullseye. When the author says people fall short of God’s glory, it doesn’t just mean we missed the bullseye; it means we missed the entire target…my arrow didn’t even make it to the target.

3) Everyone has sinned against God and has a sinful nature. Even though we all want to believe we have goodness within, Jesus Himself said that there was only one who was good and that was God (Luke 18:19, Mark 10:18). This means we all have a sinful nature and none of us deserves Heaven or a relationship with God.

Thankfully, read what verses come next:

“Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past,”
‭‭Romans‬ ‭3:24-25‬ ‭NLT‬‬

If you haven’t made a decision to trust what God has done for us all through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, consider yielding to His Spirit today. Simply call out to Christ and ask for His forgiveness and repent of your sins.