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THE
BIBLE
Can we trust a book written 2000 years ago?
EYEWITNESS
Did the writers of the New Testament get their picture of Jesus right?
GOD
- MAN
Is Jesus really God?
RESURRECTION
Did Jesus really rise from the dead?
RELIGIONS
With so many religions, why Christianity?
SUFFERING
If there is a God, why is there so much suffering?
TRINITY
Understanding the Trinity.
SCIENCE
The complementary nature of Science & Christianity.
FORGIVENESS
What it is and why it matters?
GUIDANCE
How does God guide?
REPENTANCE
What it is and why you can't get to heaven without it.
BORN
AGAIN
What does it mean to be converted and born again?
SAVING
FAITH
The kind of faith that will get you to heaven
ASSURANCE
Can I know for sure that I am going to heaven?
TRUTH
What is truth and does it matter?
MORALITY
Does it matter how we live? A Christian view of morality.
THE
CHURCH
God's vision for his family, the Church. A call to the churches of the
new millennium.
PURPOSE
How
can I find a great purpose for living?
IDENTITY
Who am I; Finding my true identity as a human being and as a child of
God.
SELF-ESTEEM
How
can I feel good about my self? The Christian basis for proper sel-esteem.
LIFE AFTER DEATHChristianity's Hope & Challenge.
THE CROSS
Why did Jesus Die? What the Bible says about the Cross.
Grace
The importance of grace in the New Testament.
A common misconception
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"The
most common misconception... is that God's approval is something
which has to be earned or merited"
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The most common misconception about being accepted by God and entering into heaven, and perhaps the most common misconception about Christianity in general, is that God's approval is something which has to be earned or merited. He will only love us and accept us if we happen to be good enough. Charles Haskell, who was a Christian missionary in Pakistan for some years, told of a friend who was amused by a Muslim who confidently asserted that he had committed 129 evil deeds. Fortunately these were offset by 135 good deeds, so he was still in credit with Allah! Unfortunately, it is not only Muslims who have such a view of God's judgement. In 1980, a Gallop Poll in the US showed that 43 per cent of Catholics and 20 per cent of Protestants agreed with the statement that "heaven is a divine reward for those who earn it by their good life."
Maybe this view sounds logical - but only if we don't think about it too deeply. People who hold such a view of God's judgement are faced with a number of problems. Firstly, who sets the standard? Usually the answer is that each person decides for themselves what they think the standard should be, ignoring what God's pass mark actually is. Secondly, it would mean that no one could ever know that they were going to heaven. Who could say for sure they were good enough? (Though many seem to think so!) And yet the Bible indicates that we can be certain. Thirdly, such a view is asking God to ignore our failures and, therefore, approve of evil. Fourthly, it contradicts what God has revealed to us in the Bible.
God's pass mark for getting into heaven
Let's see what the Bible declares. It may come as a surprise to many that God's pass mark for getting into heaven is actually 100 per cent - perfection - that is, if you want to get in on your own merit. When speaking about God's moral laws, particularly his command to love others as much as we love ourselves, the New Testament declares, "Whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it" (James 2:10). When we consider that Jesus said the most important command of all was to "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" (Matthew 22:37), then it becomes obvious that we all have a problem. The situation looks bleaker still when we take into account Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount that we break God's commands as much by our thinking as by our actions (Matthew 5:21, 22, 27, 28).
The God that the Bible reveals to us is a "holy" God. This means that he himself is without evil and is implacably opposed to it. As the prophet Habakkuk declared, "Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong" (Habakkuk 1:13). He is not only a God of love, but also a God of justice, and to be true to his own nature, he must judge evil. So here lies the problem. Nothing tainted with evil can live in God's presence. I may think I am better than most, but we are all in the same boat, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). That doesn't mean we are all as bad as we could be. It simply means that none of us are as good as we should be. Obviously there must be some other way of getting into heaven than by trying to be good enough.
God's way of salvation
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"God
demonstrates his own love for us"
Romans 5:8 |
Fortunately for us, there is another way of being reconciled to God. God himself has taken the initiative to reconcile us to himself. At the midpoint in human history, he came into our world in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus lived on earth as perfect man and gave us, in his own example, a picture of all we were meant to be. That by itself is no help. It only shows us up. However, he came for an even greater reason: to die for our sins and take upon himself the guilt of the human race. This is the central theme of the New Testament. "God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree" (1 Peter 2:24). "This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins" (1 John 4:10).
We will never understand in this life all that happened while Jesus hung on the cross, nor all that he suffered. The Bible gives many facets of it; however, the emphasis is constantly on this event being the supreme evidence of God's love, done because of our sins and to rescue us from our hopeless predicament. Jesus not only died, he rose triumphant from the grave and now lives as Lord. The living Christ now offers to us the benefits of his death on our behalf - forgiveness, reconciliation, his transforming presence in our lives, and the assurance of a wonderful future in his eternal kingdom. We do not deserve these things. They are offered to us as free gifts of his love. "The free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 6:23 - Revised Standard Version). However, we do have to decide whether they are gifts that we want, and will accept. The means by which we receive them is faith. "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast" (Ephesians 2:8,9).
This being the case, we all have to face a decision. We can continue to attempt to make it on our own merit, or else we can humble ourselves, admit we are sinners, and gratefully accept what Jesus is offering us.
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The kind of faith that will get you into heaven
A common misconception
If salvation is by faith, do good works matter?
