it does not matter

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16 ESV)

"It does not matter what you have been; it does not matter what you have done. 'Ah,' people have said to me, 'if you but knew the life I’ve lived, if you knew the sins I’ve committed . . .' I always reply, 'I’m not at all interested in your sins. I don’t care what you’ve done or what you’ve been. We’re all sinners.'

"I do not care how old you are. I will let you into the secret of the essential difference between the life as a doctor and the life of a preacher and evangelist. When the doctor is handling people, he wants to know their past history, about the father and the mother, what they died of and so on. He must have the patient’s history. He cannot do anything without it. I am not interested in histories. I am not interested in testimonies of people describing the sins they have committed, and so on. It is a waste of time because everybody is a sinner and everybody needs the same salvation. The particular sins you have committed do not matter at all, and it does not matter what you were. You are a soul; you are a human being. No one case is any more wonderful than another. Each one is a miracle, and it is God alone who could do it. You may be an octogenarian, trembling at the brink of your grave. Or you may be only eight years old. It doesn’t matter. ...The only thing that matters is, do you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ?"

-- Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Experiencing the New Birth (Crossway Books, 2015)

The painting above is Jesus and Nicodemus by Henry O. Tanner.

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