If there is any one thing I could identify as the most dangerous belief in people, it would have to be the kind of deranged thinking that leads one to believe that he or she is the exception.

We are taught that there is an exception to every rule. Others should obey the speed limit, but I am in a hurry. Everyone should pay their fair share in taxes, but our situation is different. Everyone else needs to play an active part at church, but we have so many other commitments. It goes on and on. People expect the rules to apply to everyone but them. For whatever reason (I would venture the chief reason is pride), people fall into the trap of assuming they (or their kids, or their family, or their group) is the exception. And we can come up with some amazingly obtuse reasons to justify our excepted status, but they are all just excuses.

Real world example: in response to hearing the Gospel, people will often agree that God hates sin. They may even derive some satisfaction from that fact that God is a punisher of sin…until it comes to theirs. Though they believe the truth that God will punish sin, He must certainly be going to exempt them from that judgment for reason x. The reasons are varied: Because I do so many good things. Because someone in the church did a bad thing to me once. Because I am cute. Because God understands my situation. Because. Because. Because. If people are not careful, they can because themselves into hell.
Only when we all accept the truth that we are not the exceptions will we properly respond to God’s Gospel. There is no exception. If there is or could be, Christ died in vain. God did not send His Son to be our just-in-case choice or our one-among-many option. Christ is it. The only way, the only truth, the only life. And accepting Christ does not grant us an exception. Christ’s sacrifice satisfied God’s wrath…it did not avoid it.

And so, if our Lord and Savior, the very Son of Almighty God, was not and could not be the exception, how can we expect to be?