Good and Bad Invited?

The Parable of the Wedding Feast

Love how the Bible always flips us upside down in our thinking.  The parable of the wedding feast highlights 3 kinds of people; good, bad and those who show up in their own clothes.  Only the later are thrown out and yet even the "bad" people who had accepted the invitation and chose to be found "in Christ" (wearing the freely provided clothes) were accepted into the feast.   God looks down upon the sinner saved and sees only the righteousness of Christ.  In fact, he forgets our sins...."And I will forgive their wickedness, and I will never again remember their sins.” Hebrews 8:12

Matthew 22:10-13

So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.  But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless.  Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

What is so wrong with showing up in our clothes?  It signifies trying to earn, based on our own righteousness, our own ticket into heaven.  In every way it belittles God.  He formed us from the dust of the ground and the very life that we have comes from Him (Gen 2:7).  To pursue our own apart from Him leads to our death (Gen 2:17).  It is a complete rejection of His perfect creation and plan for our life.  It is the original sin of "unbelief" and the parent of all remaining sin "pride".  "Unbelief" in that God has already provided all that we need in Him and "Pride" in that we, can by our own actions, achieve our own happiness, joy, significance, pleasure, peace, greatness, etc, etc....  Ultimately, the thinking that we can be our own god.  

Stop eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Instead, seek the knowledge of the Glory of God.  Be restored to life through BELIEF in Him (accept the wedding invitation), and be eternally changed by the washing of your sins (past, present and future) by allowing Him to place upon you that beautiful wedding garment.  Amen!