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Salvation

It’s hard for a person who grew up under religious law to understand that we are NOT justified by the law, that in fact, the law works against us because we live in a fallen human nature. It’s a whole different mindset and hard to understand if we’ve been trained to seek our goodness and salvation by the exercise of our own efforts. Most people who just don’t understand will try and try and try to be “good.” Then any good they seem to achieve causes them to pat themselves on the back and consider themselves a good person.

But we are not, none of us. We are fallen.

Sin is the natural force within us – because all descendants of Adam are born in a fallen state. Put two very young children together in a room with colorful toys, and inevitably one will try to take the other’s toy. This is evidence of a fallen nature. We gossip about people because it reinforces the conclusion we’re trying so hard to believe about ourselves, that we are better than they. If someone sins in a particular way that we are not weak in, we just love telling about it because in comparison it makes us feel good about ourselves. But it’s all a lie. We are NOT good, we are fallen, every one of us. The hardest thing for us to do is to finally admit that about ourselves, and to stop lying to ourselves about ourselves.

Here’s what the Bible has to say about our human condition:

“ALL we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on HIM the iniquity of us all.” Isaiah 53:6

“But we are ALL like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags;” Isaiah 64:6

“There is none righteous, no, NOT ONE;” Romans 3:10

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it?” Jeremiah 17:9

We are NOT saved by being “good.” No one can be good ENOUGH.

Religions teach that we are saved by the preponderance of good works, and that is the very opposite of what Jesus Christ has taught us. We are saved when we recognize that we live in a fallen human nature which cannot be “trained.” The harder we try, the more we become distraught – because it simply doesn’t work, it CANNOT work. You can’t train yourself out of your particular brand of sin. If you should seem to succeed, sin will just manifest itself in a different way. Overcome one thing, another will pop up. And that’s across the board – the case with every human being.

No, Jesus said the ONLY solution is that we must be BORN AGAIN.

WHY can’t a person be justified by the works of the law?

Many, many people are smugly confident of their salvation because they feel they have kept the laws of God to the best of their ability. But the Scriptures tell us that we are NOT saved by having kept the laws of God, BECAUSE we live in a fallen human nature and our fallen human nature is not CAPABLE of keeping the laws of God. All of us sin.

When a man stands before a judge because he committed murder or rape, he can’t change the sentence by telling the judge what good things he’s done. The man’s good deeds won’t change the sentence. And so it is with each of us. When we stand before the Judge of all, telling him what good things we’ve done, it will not change the sentence, it will not change the judgment due on the sins we have committed.

But there IS a provision made for those who place their trust in the sinless Son of God. Jesus Christ stands in our place before that judge. He bore in himself the sentence due us when he hung on that cross and was crucified for our sins, and then the gift of righteousness which man could never achieve on his own – is imparted to the sinner who believes and receives it.

Now if we were to incur judgment on something that was already judged, that would be an insult to the tremendous price Jesus Christ paid to redeem us.

Does this mean, then, that you simply put your faith in him and then go on to sin freely? Of course not. It means that once you’ve put your faith in him and have been born again by his Spirit, he puts his Spirit in your heart and you receive a new life, a new mind, a new desire to walk in the Spirit so that you will no longer fulfill the lusts of the flesh. You are, then, relying on his Spirit in you to create in you a clean heart and to renew in you a right spirit, something you cannot achieve on your own. That’s what being “born again” is all about. When you are born again you become a new creation (2nd Corinthians 5:17) and thus begins a new life.

All who are born are born as infants, and that’s the case in the new birth experience. A person isn’t born again as a spiritual adult, no, he’s born as an infant and begins the maturation process as God changes him “from glory to glory” (2nd Corinthians 3:18).

Do not insult the great sacrifice accomplished for you by Jesus Christ. Turn to him and become HIS, and you will receive in him a whole new life as he puts his Holy Spirit within you and begins the maturation process.

When the person is born again he receives a new life, and then he is transformed – slowly – into a whole new mindset – and that, not of one’s own doing but by the life-changing power of the Holy Spirit within. Many times a newly born-again person will find changes in areas that he didn’t even KNOW were sin. When you’ve lived with a weakness all your life, sometimes you aren’t even aware that it’s sin because you’re so used to it. When the Spirit of God begins his work in you, you’ll be met with many surprises.

The flesh, the old nature, cannot be trained, it must be crucified. We MUST …be born again.

If you have not been born again, ASK the Lord to bring you to that life-changing transformation. It is necessary for salvation. Take it very seriously.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new  creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” 2nd Corinthians 5:17

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