Many people have rejected Christianity without understanding its main message. If asked, “What do you understand Christianity to teach concerning how a person goes to heaven?” almost without exception people answer something along the lines of good deeds outweighing bad deeds on some type of cosmic balance scale. Not only is that answer wrong, but it is 180 degrees opposite of what the Bible teaches. It is a most unintellectual approach to reject what is indisputably one of the most important influences in world history without even understanding its main message.
The most important question in the Bible is “How does a person obtain eternal life?” It does not matter if you are Catholic or Protestant, or whether you consider yourself Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, or Episcopal. There is one God, one Christ, one Bible, and one answer to that question, regardless of what you call yourself. One of the main things that divides Catholics from Protestants as well as different denominations within Christianity is tradition. Tradition is nothing more than rules and rituals considered aids to worship, made up by men, that are practiced in churches. Some traditions that churches practice are completely unbiblical. Others are more biblical. But someone may be going to a church with completely unbiblical traditions and yet truly have eternal life, while another person may attend a church that has more biblical traditions and yet not have eternal life. Traditions are not the issue.
What would most people’s response be when asked the question, “Have you come to the place in your spiritual life where you have the assurance you would go to heaven if you died tonight, or do you feel you are somewhere along the way?” Quite often the answer is, “Well, I’m not absolutely sure I’d go to heaven, but I do feel I am somewhere along the way.” With an issue as important as this, who wants to have uncertainty? In view of the transitory nature of life, that is a mighty poor hope! Especially when the Bible says one can be sure with 100% certainty whether he has eternal life. 1 John 5:13 says, “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, in order that you may know you have eternal life.” God’s Word says you can know you have eternal life with absolute certainty! The reason many people have uncertainty is because no one has ever taken a Bible and shown them how they can know for sure that they are going to heaven. That is what we will do in this chapter.
We will discuss four points that a person must understand, with a verse and illustration for each. It may be helpful to get a New Testament and look up each verse as we go along. This chapter is set up in an outline form so it is easy to remember and easy to share with someone else.
I. YOU ARE A SINNER
A. The Verse: Romans 3:23: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
When the Bible says “all have sinned,” it means we have all broken God’s law. All of us have sinned and fallen short of the standard God has set. We have lied, cheated, and broken the Ten Commandments in thought and in deed.
B. The Illustration: The Rock
Many people don’t view themselves as sinners because they feel they are not that sinful. “After all, I have never murdered anyone and I try to live a good moral life.” We can feel “good” only when we compare ourselves to someone else who is not as good as we are. But the Bible says we fall short of God’s standard, not other people’s!
Suppose each one of us were to pick up a rock, and I say to you, “We’ll throw our rocks and hit the North Pole.” You might throw further than I, or I might throw further than you; and Mother Teresa might throw further than both of us, but none of us would hit the North Pole. We would all come short. God has set a standard of righteousness that He expects every one of us to meet. While we may be more righteous compared to someone else, we are all sinful people, and no matter how religiously we live or how good we are, we cannot meet God’s standard.
Transition: When we break a human law and we get caught, we have to pay a penalty, such as a traffic fine or a jail term. What then is the penalty for breaking God’s laws?
II. THE PENALTY OF SIN IS DEATH
A. The Verse: Romans 6:23: “For the wages of sin is death.”
Not just physical death, for this death is later defined in the Bible as the “second death,” or “spiritual death,” which is separation from God forever in hell. One may think this sounds kind of harsh: How could a supposedly loving and merciful God send someone to hell who may be doing the best he can? Besides the fact that none of us really do the best we can, we must understand that the Bible teaches that God is not only perfectly loving but is also perfectly just and perfectly righteous. And a perfectly holy God cannot express one character quality at the expense of another. For example, God cannot express His love in a way that would at the same time violate or compromise His justice. Were God to do that even one time, he would no longer be a perfectly just God. Let me illustrate.
B. The Illustration: The Judge
Recently a San Diego newspaper contained a story that implied a judge may get impeached for “fixing” his son’s parking fines. Why couldn’t the judge still sit in judgment over bigger and more serious lawbreakers? (This is what people expect God to do - overlook “parking fine” sinners and only judge the “major leaguers.”) The judge cannot do this, for even in the human judiciary system we recognize that if the judge violates the standard of justice he is obligated to uphold, he has no right to judge anyone else by that same standard.
In a similar way, if God were to say to even one “parking fine” sinner, “You are free to go,” He would have no basis to send Adolph Hitler or even Satan himself to hell. If even imperfect sinful man recognizes this by impeaching a judge, how much less can a perfectly holy God do what imperfect, sinful man won’t even do? Would the Creator have a lower standard of morality than the creature? God cannot grade on a “curve” and still be a perfectly righteous God; the penalty for sin must be paid.
Transition: One could say that God had a problem, for God created man and loved man, but man rebelled against Him. We are a fallen race and God cannot overlook sin. But the good news is that God found a way to solve the problem.
III.CHRIST DIED FOR YOU
A. The Verse: Romans 5:8: “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
B. The Illustration: The Judge II
Let’s go back to the story of the judge who was impeached. Let’s say that as the son stands before the judgment seat, the judge brings down the gavel and pronounces the verdict: “Guilty; the penalty is a $100 fine.” But then an amazing thing happens. The judge takes off his robe, walks down the stairs of his judgment seat, and stands with his son. He turns to his own judgment bar and pays the $100 fine. Then he walks back up the stairs and puts his robe back on. Now if he were to do that, would the young man be free to go? Yes, he would. And would the judge have been impeached? Again, no, for he did not violate his justice because the penalty was paid. The San Diego judge could have paid the penalty in the place of his son and actually solved the problem. In the same way, no matter how much God loved man, he had to bring down the gavel and say, “The penalty of sin is death.” But He loved us so much that the Judge Himself, in the Person of Jesus Christ, came down and paid the penalty for us so we don’t have to pay it. Christ died in your place as your substitute!
Transition: There is one thing that God requires in order for you to get what Christ did on the cross applied to you personally. The Bible says...
IV. YOU CAN BE SAVED THROUGH FAITH
A. The Verse: Ephesians 2:8,9: “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast.”
Faith in Christ saves from sin. Works we do for God cannot save from sin, because works do not pay the penalty for sin. It is not what I do for God that saves; it is what God has done for me.
There are two elements to saving faith.
1. Faith or belief means to accept something as true: You must accept as true that Christ is the Son of God, that He died for your sins on the cross, was buried, and was raised from the dead just as the Bible says. But just mentally assenting to the historical facts of the Gospel is not saving faith; there is one other element.
2. Faith or belief also means to trust or rely on someone for something. You must trust and rely on Christ alone as your only way to heaven. You must believe that Christ died for all of your sins - past, present, and fu- ture - and trust in Him, not your goodness, religious works, or anything else.
B. The Illustration: The Boat
Let’s say you are in the ocean, shipwrecked, and you see a lifeboat. You believe it floats and is a lifeboat, but you don’t trust it to save you. You think it might sink; you trust instead in some other piece of floating debris, which ultimately is not seaworthy, and you drown.
Or, you not only see and believe that the lifeboat is a boat, but you trust or believe it will save you, and you get in the boat and are saved from drowning. You must trust in Christ and Christ alone for the forgiveness of all your sins. Not Christ plus your good behavior, church attendance, or in any good work at all.
The moment you trust in Christ as your personal Savior, you become a Christian and have eternal life. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
NOTE: The above method of presenting the Gospel is easy to master and should encourage you to share your faith. There are just four points, with a verse and illustration for each. The rest of this page deals with further explanations and handling potential objections and misunderstandings.
NO BALANCE SCALE
Many people erroneously think that the destiny of heaven or hell is determined by whether the good things you have done outweigh the bad. The previous explanation of the Gospel should refute this false idea and show that the Bible does not teach it. The meanings of the words “justification” and “repentance” will greatly aid in understanding this issue. It is also important to understand that God’s main purpose for the Ten Commandments known as the “law” in the Bible, never was intended to be a system of salvation.
THE PURPOSE OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS:
1. A tutor to lead us to Christ
Galatians 3:24-26: “Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, that we may be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. For you are all sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ.” How is the law a tutor that leads us to Christ?
2. The law shows us our sinfulness - because none of us can keep it!
Romans 3:19-20: “... it speaks to those under the Law, that every mouth may be closed, and all the world may become accountable to God; because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin.”
Let’s suppose God’s law is set up like criminal law, with felonies (state prison), misdemeanors (county jail), and infractions (a fine only, no jail sentence, such as a traffic ticket). Looking at the Ten Commandments, we would agree that murder would be a felony and perhaps theft would be a misdemeanor. Let’s say that lying would be an infraction. How many times have you lied? What about lust, unkind thoughts, anger, gossiping, or disobeying parents? We must all admit we have broken God’s law thousands upon thousands of times, even if only an “infraction.” What if we had to pay tens of thousands of traffic fines? We could never pay that debt in our entire lives! Thus the law shows us our sinfulness, and leads the honest person to a feeling of helplessness making him aware of his need for a Savior. The verses after Romans 3:20, all the way through Romans 4:8, then proclaim how there is a way we can be “just” before a perfectly holy God and go to heaven, apart from our failing ability to keep the Ten Commandments.
JUSTIFIED BY FAITH
Galatians 2:16: “...knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law shall no flesh be justified.”
The word “justified” is frequently used in Romans and Galatians. Paul took this word right out of the first-century courts. It meant to pronounce someone righteous in the eyes of the court because the lawbreaker had paid his penalty and was then free to go. In the Bible, justification means a once- and-for-all-act whereby God pronounces or declares a sinner to be judicially righteous even though in his actual experience he is not righteous because he still sins. But God is free to declare a sinful person righteous and still be a “just” God because the penalty for his sin has been paid by Christ: “...That He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26). This is a forensic or judicial way of looking at justification.
In the judicial sense, all of a Christian’s sins have been forgiven - past, present, and future - though we still struggle with sin as long as we live in this life. As we will see in Chapter 2, there are indeed consequences to a Christian’s continual sinning, but they are not related to a Christian’s standing before God. As in a human family a son can be good or bad, and consequences follow, but this doesn’t change the fact that he is the son of his father.
The Bible states nearly 200 times that faith or belief in Christ is the single condition for salvation. For example: Romans 3:19 through 4:8; Acts 16:30-31; Galatians 2:16, 21; 3:24ff; John 3:15-16, 18; 1:12; 5:24; 6:47; 11:25-26; 20:31; Philippians 3:9; Titus 3:5; etc. There are many more verses than these, but a reading of all the above passages shows clearly that the Bible teaches that faith alone in Christ alone saves from sin.
WHAT ABOUT REPENTANCE?
Repentance is necessary for salvation. The original word means “a change of mind.” As evangelist Larry Moyer says, “Repentance, when used in an evangelistic context in Scripture, means to change your mind about whatever is keeping you from trusting Christ, and trust Him to save you.”
This is why there are different objects for the word. Sometimes it is particular sins, idols, or unbelief in Christ, but whenever someone changes
his mind about whichever of these things have kept him from trusting Christ, both repentance and faith have taken place [1]. Because of the conceited pride of man, many people refuse to humble themselves and admit they are not “good,” but are sinful and depraved individuals who are very much in need of a Savior. Unless they repent from trusting in themselves and turn to Christ they cannot be saved.
There is one book in the New Testament that was written for the specific purpose of telling us how we can know we are going to heaven - the Gospel of John (see John 20:31). The word “believe” is used 98 times, and the word “repentance” is not used once. Are we to believe that the Gospel of John does not tell a person how to be saved? Since repentance is necessary to be saved, and since John repeatedly presents “believe in Christ” as the requirement, repentance is included in belief. When you ask someone to stop trusting in whatever he has been trusting in, and instead trust Christ for salvation, he cannot do so without changing his mind. Thus asking someone to trust Christ as Savior is calling upon him to repent whether you use the word “repent” or not [2].
REPENTANCE OFTEN MISUNDERSTOOD
A prevalent idea is that repentance means someone must first turn from sin and then reform his life as a prerequisite for salvation. Both experience and logic, as well as the Scriptures, show this idea to be false. Not even a mature Christian has turned from all his sins. Who then, when he compares himself with God’s righteousness, can ever feel he is even close to turning from sin? The problem then becomes, How much sin must be turned from? What degree of success in keeping the Ten Commandments is required before God will accept a person? This would result in salvation by works, not grace! But Scripture says, “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us” (Titus 3:5).
This false concept of repentance was also prevalent in the first century. The religious professionals of the day, the Pharisees, accused Christ of associating with tax collectors (known for extortion) and sinners. Of course if the tax collectors first ceased being tax collectors and the sinners first reformed themselves, they would have had no problem with Christ associating with them. Christ replied:
It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick. But go and learn what this means, “I desire compassion and not sacrifice,” for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners (Matthew 9:12-13).
It is not that they were actually righteous, but Christ reasoned with them based on their own estimate of themselves. Has anyone ever heard of a sick person first healing himself and then calling for a doctor? Does not the doctor come when the patient is still sick, and it is the doctor who effects the cure?
There are two main things that constitute the fundamental difference between Christianity and all other religious systems: The forgiveness of sin and the welcome to the sinner. Concerning the sinner, all other systems of religion know of no welcome to him until, by some means, he has ceased to be a sinner and become a penitent. They would first make him a penitent and then bid him welcome to God. But Christ first welcomes him to God and thereby makes him a penitent [3].
Christ begins where all other religions point to as the end. Every religion is a moral system in which men, through self-denial, discipline, and effort work up to the goal of becoming children of God and the kingdom. But Christ makes men such freely, by His grace. He begins by giving us the righteousness that makes us a child of God right at the outset, and then bids us to walk in a manner worthy of what He has already made us positionally.
So Christ came not to call the righteous, but sinners - not to penance, but to something higher and greater and better than penance. He came to call us to Himself, and that is the beginning of becoming a penitent.
Thus the misunderstanding of repentance that requires a prerequisite of cleansing one’s life in order to become a Christian differs not from all the religions in the world, allies itself with the enemies of Christ in the New Testament, and hopelessly obscures the grace of God.
This point is of the utmost importance because a prerequisite for salvation is that a person must understand that he cannot keep the law. In any method of presenting the Gospel, this is always the first point! If a person is so self-righteous as to believe he successfully keeps the law there is no point in proceeding to the next step of “Christ has died for your sins.”
It is only through his understanding of his inability to turn from his sins that he even listens to the Gospel message and understands his need for a Savior in the first place. If he again hears the message of “lawkeeping” (in its different forms) which he already knows he cannot keep, he will be driven away from Christianity with more guilt than when he came.
TWO KINDS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS
It is also necessary to understand that the Bible speaks of two kinds of righteousness, which we may call “active” and “passive.”
Active righteousness is that which we produce by keeping the Ten Commandments, following Christ in discipleship, and otherwise actively working good deeds. This kind of righteousness is urged by our Lord, and is noble, right, and good. However, this kind of righteousness cannot save, because no matter how much we do, it isn’t enough! “There is none righteous, no not one” (Romans 3:10).
Passive righteousness, on the other hand, is the righteousness of faith. We may call it “passive” because we do not produce it. When we place our faith in Christ, we are pronounced righteous (or justified). Paul spoke of his stringent efforts at keeping the law, which he finally gave up so that he “may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith” (Philippians 3:9; see also Romans 9:30-10:4).
This understanding helps clarify some of the things Jesus said. When He spoke about “active” righteousness, He spoke it to two categories of people: self-righteous unbelievers who rationalized what the law revealed to their conscience, and those who were already Christians.
The unbelievers who viewed themselves as righteous are represented by the scribes and Pharisees in the New Testament. They violated the spirit of the law while being very scrupulous in keeping the letter of the law. To
them Jesus said in effect, “You think you are righteous because you don’t commit adultery, but I say to you, If you look at a woman to lust after her you have already committed adultery in your heart. You think you haven’t committed murder, but I say to you, When you hate your brother you have committed murder already in your heart.” He reminded them how they tithed and did many outward good deeds, while “neglecting the weightier things of the law, as justice and mercy and faithfulness” (Matthew 23). When the rich man asked Christ what good thing he could do to inherit eternal life, and further stated that he kept the Commandments, he was shown that he broke the First commandment, for he loved his riches that he could not leave more than God (Luke 18:18-26). Christ gave these men expositions of the inner meaning or the “spirit” of the law so they would see themselves as sinful in their own eyes and see their need of a Savior. This is the necessary pre-evangelistic technique when dealing with self-righteous people.
Christ was certainly not telling them how to be saved. When this was His subject, Jesus said to believe in Him. When asked, “What shall we do that we may work the works of God? Jesus answered and said to them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.... Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life’” (John 6:28-29, 47 NKJV).
The other category of people to whom Christ spoke of active righteous-ness was His own disciples. He did not engage in pre-evangelistic expositions of the law to them, for they were already saved. Instead He urged them to live lives of commitment to Him. When one reads about “cross-bearing” and “hating one’s life” in comparison to dedication to Him, searching back in the context frequently reveals that at the beginning of the discourse Jesus was speaking to His own disciples who were already saved (Matthew 16:24-28). Jesus did not attach a saving value to the active righteousness He urged His followers to engage in any more than He did to that of the self-righteous unbelievers.
[1] Larry Moyer, You Can Tell It! Seminar on Evangelism (Dallas: Evantell Inc., 1994), p.13.
[2]Ibid.
[3]Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (Mclean, VA: Macdonald Publishing Co. 1883), p.507.
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