Salvation from what?
In becoming a believer it's been interesting to note the reactions I get when I tell people the good news about my conversion. It's like going to a barbecue and informing your acquaintances that you've been suffering from genital herpes but you've recently resolved the issue - they're shocked at what you've just told them, they'll give a pretty awkward comment about being happy for your situation but they'll want to change the topic asap, avoid talking about it ever again and will quite likely never have the same opinion of you.
Initially I couldn't work it out - in accepting Christ and just discovered the single most important discovery of my life and naively thought that I'd just tell people and they'd realise the same thing (I've rejected Christ my whole life, but now that Luke has accepted Him I realise it must be true so I am a Christian now too!). I quickly worked out that as a Christian, we're called to testify the truth and be living examples of Christ on earth, but the decision to accept or reject Jesus is a decision that is made solely in the hearts of each individual and the sad reality is most will reject Him. We need to respect the importance of freewill in the same way that God does and consequently I've become a lot more comfortable being the lone Christian in my circles.
Since starting this blog a few weeks ago and it's been really interesting to note the feedback from various family members and friends who have read it. Probably because written content is more non-confrontational than spoken word, many have been able to understand my journey to faith in a way that they’ve not been able to do in the year or so previously. By far the most common response has been that they've enjoyed my writing and they’re really happy for me that I've been able to find my purpose. I mean this sincerely, but as a believer, this response is the one that makes very little sense to me. It’s as if to say that I am very happy that you’ve learned that we all stand before our Creator on judgement day where you’ll be saved by the blood of Christ and I’ll spend eternity with Satan. When you consider it this way, there really should only be one of two responses for someone who doesn’t accept my proclamation - either you are so troubled by my message that you want to shut it down and ignore me, or you totally dismiss my message and feel sad for my mental delusion. I’ve spent some time trying to understand this disconnect and it just occurred to me in a revelation today - for most people, Jesus Christ is a solution without a problem.
There’s an old entrepreneurial concept that I used to spend a lot of my time focusing on known as product market fit. The idea is a simple one - the product (ie the solution) is only as good as the markets need for it (the problem). To explain it further, I’m going to use an analogy of one of the several failed businesses I started when I was younger. The solution we came up with was a coffee van that would be stationed at a horse training track in the very early morning (4am) to serve the staff coffees and snacks. The problem, as we saw it, was that these people had nowhere else open to buy supplies to wake them up at the crack of dawn. Our problem was that the staff were low paid, didn’t get break time and had no interest in spending money on a coffee that they would otherwise just mix themselves for free. Our solution, $4 coffees, went unsold because none of the workers had a problem they needed to solve. Another way of thinking about this with regards to my faith is that it’s like me talking about a shiny new boat that I’ve purchased - the boat sounds really great and they believe me when I say how much fun I have out on the water, but they don’t live near the beach, have never spent much time on boats and don’t really see any need to go out and buy one themselves. In their lives, the boat is a solution without a problem.
When Jesus Christ walked towards the banks of the River Jordan 2,000 years ago, He was announced loudly by John The Baptist who proclaimed ‘Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world’ (John 1:29). Jesus Christ was God’s solution for the problem of sin in the world and therefore if you are unaware of your own sin then you are not in need of Jesus Christ. Without the desperate need for Jesus Christ, you can afford yourself the luxury in your own mind of treating Him as a brilliant moral teachers whose lessons you might incorporate into your life philosophy along with any other ‘spiritual’ teachers. The importance of Jesus Christ only becomes truly apparent when you imagine yourself standing before God with a lifetime of iniquity and transgressions to answer for and no fig leaf to cover your nakedness before Him. If you’re not aware of your own sin then the message of Jesus as the Redeemer of mankind who was pierced for our transgressions (Isaiah 53:5), will put enmity between us and [Eve] (Genesis 3:15) and will bring justice to the nations (Isaiah 42:1) just doesn’t have the same impact as someone who is completely aware of of how short they fall of God’s glory.
The journey to Jesus Christ is not an appealing one for a non-believer because the first step forces upon you a feeling of moral accountability that you have never felt before. Jesus Christ told us that he came not to bring peace on earth, but a sword (Matthew 10:34). What he meant by this is that He did not come to deliver a message that would be easy to accept and loved by all who heard it - he came to bring a sword, figuratively speaking, that would cut through us just like the truth always does. How often have you done something that you know is wrong and to avoid dealing with it, you put it to the very back of your mind and try to never think about it again? Seeking God requires us to bring all those thoughts into the very front of our mind, all at once. Christ said ‘The world hates Me because I testify of it that its works are evil' (John 7:7). When you consider it this way, it’s easy to understand why doctrines like Zen Buddhism and the New Age are so appealing!
The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God (Psalm 53) and I am not writing this content for fools. I write this content for those who do not yet know God, but do not deny His existence and have an interest in finding out the truth. If you accept that God might exist and imagine you die unexpectedly today, how do you think He will judge you? Will you be allowed into Heaven, or will you be damned for eternity? In undertaking this thought experiment, you might find that you don’t have a good measuring stick or process for determining your own level of morality. How will God define whether you have been a good person?
You might consider the list of indiscretions described by the Apostle Paul in Galatians 5:19-21 - adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like.
How many of these indiscretions are you guilty of in just the past week, let alone your entire lifetime? If you want to spend just 20 minutes assessing your level of morality, read Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, then look yourself honestly in the mirror and ask how you measure up.
If you don’t want to question your own morality, then you will find a grand library full of self help books, philosophies and religious doctrines that will give you all the answers you seek without ever having to put your own conscience under the microscope. If you do realise how hopelessly short you fall, I’m here to tell you that I’m another hopelessly immoral sinner who has been saved by the blood of the Lamb that is Jesus Christ as a free gift from God that He has made available for all of humanity.
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