I don't know about you, but I often find it hard to keep sharing the gospel. Many of my friends and family reject Jesus, and it's hard to keep praying for them and keep hoping that God will save them. Well I had a huge encouragement this week that I wanted to share, to help you to keep going too.
I help to run a Christian Union in the school where I teach, and since the exam year groups have left school there have been a core of about 4 students attending. We've been doing an 'exploring the basics of Christianity' course as most of these students come from non-Christian families. A few weeks ago, I asked them how you get to heaven. One boy said that you had to be a good person. Since then we have looked at various Bible passages which show that only through Jesus you can be saved. Yesterday, at the meeting, this boy said outright that you can't be good enough, only through Jesus can you be righteous in God's sight. Hallelujah!
This was really encouraging because it shows that there will always be people who are just waiting to hear the full gospel. When they hear it, they respond in faith through God working in their hearts. I think I spend too much time telling God who to save, and not enough responding to the people in my life that He IS working in, and rejoicing in that.
'Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.' James 1:12
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3 comments:
What would you make of the question, however, that how could an all loving God and an omnipotent God not save someone with 'implicit' faith in Christ, that is unbaptised, and may even be a non-believer? To say that God could not save a good person is to deny God's omnipotence, and to say that God would not save a good person is illogical. We do not have to get hung up on the definition of good, however, as we see many examples of goodness without Christ in the Bible, for example the man in the temple as opposed to the Pharisee praying humbly, or the Good Samaritan - notice the word Good!
"No one comes to the father except through me" does not imply that faith in Christ is necessary for Salvation, but merely that Christ's death allows one to be saved - to say that without faith we cannot be saved is ridiculous as this is implying that God is not all powerful!
"That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." (Romans 10) Again, this does not say that God HAS to save you if you believe - remember, St Paul is evangelising here, and that we must not presume that we are going to be saved! To say this is to presume we know the will of God, and to presume we know the will of God is pride, and 'pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall'. We must never presume we are to be saved, or we are, in Calvin's term, 'the elect', because that implies that we know the will of God - categorically, we cannot say this, even if we believe it, without pride entering our hearts and self confidence - everything that Christ teaches against. This is to love one's self above both God and our neighbour.
Romans 11
"For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all". God's mercy is not for the elect, but for all. Christ did not come to save the righteous, but the sinners. Nothing we do is sufficient for our pass to Heaven, but we are all capable of receiving Grace and mercy for salvation.
You are contradicting yourself Phil, to be an unbeliever is to have no faith. Faith in christ IS necessary for salvation, and without it we CAN NOT be saved. Faith is more than just believing in Gods existence or Jesus' passion, it is giving up yourself to Jesus and living your life fearing God.
Even though Jesus died for our sins thereby allowing us a clean slate we still must worship Jesus and believe that through him we can be accepted by God as his own. He is the sole reason we gentiles can one day have a chance at heaven, without Jesus dying for us we have no shot.
This is an interesting issue, Phil- I actually think the definition of 'good' is something which needs to be defined biblically, rather than humanly speaking. In the Bible, nothing can be 'good' except God alone (Mark 10:18), and so without God nothing can be 'good'. This means that a person can only be 'good' once they've submitted to Christ and He has begun a good work in them (Philippians 1:6).
In essence, becoming a good person means becoming a godly person ie. more like God. That is our aim and goal as Christians. Jesus' parables- the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Lk 18) and the story of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10), for example- highlight two things:
1. The need for us to humbly approach God, not on the basis of our own 'goodness', but on the basis of His righteousness and grace.
'To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.'
"But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'
"I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."
2. That once we have come to God for mercy, we should live changed lives by the power of His Spirit. This is what the parable of the Good Samaritan means. It means that Christian living is radical- putting others before ourselves and going the extra mile to help each other. This parable was Jesus' way of explaining what the command 'love thy neighbour as thyself' really meant.
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