Grace.
I often ask groups of children when I teach them, “Will you go to heaven if you’re a good kid?” And I usually get the same resounding “yes!” from the crowd.
Many adults in the Church would answer the same way.
This is a big problem in the Church today, and it starts in Children’s Church. We are inadvertently (or sometimes directly) teaching kids and adults that good people go to heaven and bad people go to hell.
That’s the prevailing view around the world among both religious and non-religious people – that religious people think they’re saved by living a good life.
That’s a Santa Claus theology. That’s legalism. That’s religiosity. And that’s heresy.
God is not Santa Claus. He is God. And He saves people by His grace alone (an undeserved gift). If we could save ourselves by being good, then why did Jesus die on the cross? If we could save ourselves by being good, then we would boast about it, returning again to being bad (Ephesians 2:8).
Grace comes to us through faith on our part. Sound too easy? It’s not. It costs a ton – the suffering and death of God’s only Son, Jesus Christ, to be precise. So there’s nothing easy about it, especially because Jesus requires His followers to come and die with Him.
But we don’t suffer in order to be saved. We die to ourselves because we are saved. That’s a BIG difference. Even the good deeds we perform are not of us, but rather Christ in us (Galatians 2:20).
Grace really is amazing.
4 responses to “The Most Misunderstood Concept about God”
You GO buddy. Keep up the good work. Steve
I like it.
I agree…I think that our puny efforts to add anything to what Jesus finished on the cross is an offense to the price he paid and arrogance on our part…our righteousness is as filthy rags.
True Love By Brenda Mead True love is not just the physical rensaiolthip between a man and a woman. True love is willing to give up everything including your life for those that you love, even for a total stranger. True love is willing to go above and beyond. It’s getting up late at night because your child has had a bad dream. True love is willing to sit on the bathroom floor with your wife when she is sick and throwing up, keeping her hair out of her face and holding her hand. True love is putting that special someones needs befor your own, sticking by them and showing them you care, even when times get tough. True love is knowing that there will be good days and bad, and hanging in there even though now days most take the easy way out. True love is loving someone despite their faults and imperfections for no one is perfect not even ourselves. True love is giving as well as receiving. True love is willing to appoligize even though you feel you have nothing to appologize for. True love is growing old together, listening to one another, listening to stories you have heard a million times before but still willing to listen. True love is watching your children grow up, willing to let them fall but being there to pick up the pieces and help them to not quit. Willing to let go of them so that they can stand on their own and be the people God meant them to be, but if hard times hit willing to regroup and be uplifting, encouraging to them. And in the end True love is saying goodbye to the one you love and hold dear, knowing that they go to a better world even though you wish they could stay but knowing one day you will be together again. True love is going on when you feel like giving up because you know that that is what they would want for you. True love is lasting and can never die, but changes through the years as we get older. The stages of true love if you will allow yourself to experience it, has wonderful and incredible things in store for you.
[…] on this spectrum, you can find some clues to our answer in a previous post I made about Santa Claus here. But I am more interested in all the other different perspectives out there. So feel free to […]