Yardstick Salvation — How Good is Good Enough?
Yardstick Salvation — How Good is Good Enough?
By Jack Kinsella
One of the most profound evidences that these are the last days before the return of Christ for His Church is borne out by the shifting battlefield tactics being used by the enemy.
As we get closer to the end of the age, there is a spiritual battle ongoing for the hearts and minds of men being waged with an intensity unlike any in history.
The airwaves are saturated with psuedo-Christian subliminal messages that reinforce all kinds of false, but reasonable sounding counterfeit alternatives to salvation.
If you watch family-values oriented entertainment, you will learn that when people die, they become angels and come back and help other people.
You can also tune into TV ‘evangelists’ to learn how to buy your way into heaven (by sending payments directly to them).
Our social structure teaches that all religions are equally valid and that there are as many ways to God as there are religious systems.
In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, former President Bush took that position, claiming that the god of Islam is the same God worshipped by Christians and Jews. It has since become a secular article of faith rigidly defended by the Politically Correct.
Science, as a discipline, has pretty much dedicated itself to disproving God exists in the first place — even if it has to violate its own canon of ethics in order to do so. Allow me to sidetrack for a moment and explain.
The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics says that energy spontaneously tends to flow only from being concentrated in one place to becoming diffused or dispersed and spread out.
In other words, all things break down eventually. A hot frying pan cools when removed from heat because the energy in that hot pan flows out into the cooler room air.
The opposite never happens.
The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics explains why paper, trees, coal, gas and all things like them burn, why sand and dry ice even in pure oxygen can’t ever burn, why the sun will eventually cool down, why iron rusts, why there are hurricanes or any weather at all on earth, what makes things break, why houses get torn apart in tornadoes or explosions, and why everything living tends to die.
Science demands empirical evidence; that is to say, before something can be a scientific fact, it must first be able to be demonstrated in a lab experiment.
The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics can be demonstrated by closing up your house for five years and letting it ‘go to seed’. When you come home again, you will have your proof that things, left to themselves, deteriorate.
The theory of evolution requires reversing the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Somehow, your abandoned house will eventually clean and fix itself up. I’d like to see that demonstrated in a lab.
The only thing about evolution that is demonstrable is that somehow, a ‘theory’ evolved into a ‘fact’ — all by itself.
Yet all these concepts are continually hammered into people — from turning into angels to denying God even exists. And if we have learned anything about how the human brain works at all, we know that the best way to teach something is by constant repetition.
Consequently, there are probably as many opinions being offered about how to get to heaven as there are people who have them. At one time or another, all of us have run into somebody who is planning to trust that his good works will counter-balance his bad ones.
Or people who think that simply believing there is a God will go to heaven. Others think going to church is their ticket. Some think that anybody who has led a ‘good life’ will be granted admission.
Others believe that keeping the Ten Commandments will get them into heaven. As long as you never break one of them in your entire life, it’s a good plan.
(Interestingly, about the only religious system that secularists are certain won’t get you to heaven is Biblical Christianity. There is NO defense for Biblical Christianity — it is too intolerant to be tolerated by the tolerant.)
For the rest of us, it’s even less logical than planning for retirement by buying a lottery ticket.
At least, with a lottery ticket you have one chance in a several million of winning.
Assessment
It is the mission of every Christian to be “ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear,” according to 1 Peter 3:15.
That is why your Omega Letter exists — to supply you with the ammunition and a tactical plan of battle — before you step out onto the battlefield.
The battle is of eternal importance. Every person we meet over the course of a day has an eternal destiny. They will spend eternity in unspeakable joy in the Presence of Christ, or they will spend a Christless eternity in unspeakable torment.
Those who think that living a ‘good life’ — or that the scales will balance out somehow in their favor before the Throne — start out with a misunderstanding of their relationship with God.
“Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.” (Romans 3:20)
Being ‘good enough’ is a belief structure that measures one person against OTHER people. THAT is the fatal flaw that proves salvation must be a function of grace and not works or behavior.
‘Good enough’, compared to whom? Mother Teresa? Your cousin Phil? The Pope? Bashar al Assad?
Whose yardstick do we use to measure “good enough”?
Mine? Your pastor’s? The Pope’s? My wife’s? You see the problem. Everybody’s yardstick is a different length. No matter how we measure good enough, it really isn’t good enough — because we’re not in charge of that. We only think we are.
The only fair standard against which God could measure ‘good enough’ would be His own. Since God is sinless, He can not stand sin, or people with sin. To be good enough for God means to be sinless — an obvious impossibility.
“For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23)
Think of it this way. If three of us throw darts at a dart board and one gets two inches away from the bullseye, another four inches away, and another misses the board completely, which one of us actually hit the bullseye?
The reason for the ‘hope that is in you’ is the knowledge of the fact that missing the bullseye means exactly that. NOBODY hit it — except Jesus.
But in a dart game, it only takes one guy on the team to hit it for that team to win. The Bible says that team membership is sufficient — if you are on the team that hit the bullseye.
It is incumbent upon each of us, who have been granted the unspeakable gift of salvation, to teach other people how to join the team.
Repent (change your mind) about your sin nature and your ability to clean up on your own. Trust Jesus.
“To declare, I say, at this time His righteousness: that He might be just, and the Justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.” (Romans 3:26-28)
“Seeing then that we have a great high Priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession.” (Hebrews 4:14)
Until He comes. Maranatha!