Beauty in the Beast -- Part 1 "Kill the Beast"

I have been in a Beauty and the Beast mood lately. This is probably one theme/topic that will take a couple posts just due to the fact that there are a few ways I could have went with this title and I do not want to cram them all into this one post. So, I apologize if this isn't a super long post. Anyway, here goes my  first Beauty and the Beast inspired blog entry :)

Most people like to believe that they are good people. They like to think that they do enough good things to make up for the bad things they do in their life. However, what if I say that no good that you yourself do could ever make up for the bad things that you do? Ecclesiastes 7:20 (NIV) says, "There is not a righteous man on earth who does what is right and never sins." Ephesians 2:8-9 (NIV) says, "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith -- and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God -- not by works, so that no one can boast." These two verses go together to say that everyone sins, yet there is no good works that they can do themselves in order to save themselves. So, where does this leave us as humans? It leaves us as we have always been - sinful beings ("Beasts" for the sake of referencing Beauty and the Beast). 
If we are under the sinful being status, and doing good works will do nothing for us, what can we even do? The answer -- nothing. We cannot do anything. We are the beasts in the beauty and beast analogy. The only person who can and did do something is the beauty part of the analogy. That person is Jesus Christ. John 3:16 (NIV) says, "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life." Jesus Christ is God's Son who He sent to earth to be born of a virgin. Jesus was the only one to ever live a sin-free life. Because of that, He was able to take all of our sins (literally our sins -- even though we hadn't been born yet) upon Himself when He died on the cross. A perfect sacrifice was our Salvation, and Jesus loved us enough to be that sacrifice. 
Because Jesus died for us, we have a way to "kill the beast" and be washed clean of our sin. That is not saying that Christians are perfect, just that we have a loving Father in Heaven who loves us enough to show us grace and mercy in forgiving us for our sins.