I'm in the middle of listening to RC Sproul's Renewing Your Mind series on guilt that aired last week.  He used a good illustration to explain our status before God, I'll summarize it in my own words.

We all know the saying "nobody's perfect."  Everyone has done something wrong, no matter how large or small.  What do we do to handle this?  Many, many people assume that God will just adjust His standards.  Like a class at school where everyone is failing, the professor will adjust the grades using a bell curve and if you are grading above the class average, you'll receive a passing grade.

But does God adjust His standard?  In fact, He cannot.  If God is holy, perfect and just, He cannot compromise His standards for us. 

What do we do then if God won't adjust His standard?  God will not adjust His standard, but He did provide a way for us to have our imperfections removed, and that is through Jesus Christ.  Romans 4 tells us that those who have faith alone in Christ alone will not have their sins imputed to them, in other words, they will not have anything wrong on their record, a clean slate.  Not only are sins completely removed, but the perfect righteousness of Christ (His sinless perfection) is credited to our account!

What does this faith in Christ look like?  It's acknowledging that Jesus is the Son of God, that he died for sin and was raised on the third day.  He is the one mediator between God and man and he is the only way to a right relationship with God.  He is the Lord (master, ruler) and we must humble ourselves and treat him as Lord.  He is NOT looking at what we've done, but entirely at our heart.  We bring NOTHING that can please God, we have an attitude of coming to Jesus completely empty handed and desperate for him, realizing that we are lost, deserving of hell and completely unsaveable apart from God saving us.  If our heart is in that state, Romans 10 tells us that if we call upon Jesus, we will be saved.

John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.