In order for a student to get into a high-level college such as Yale, they must have achieved very good scores on their SAT or ACT test, have a nearly perfect GPA score from a curriculum of difficult courses, and participate in special activities that show your potential for leadership positions. If these requirements have been met then they may be selected to join the university. It truly is a school that can be only gotten into by one’s merits and achievements.
This is completely opposite, however, than the way that a person can receive salvation and gain access to the Kingdom of God. While an Earthly institution may make requirements that a person needs to meet to merit something, salvation and eternal life are not things which can be earned. They are gifts from God to those who have faith in Jesus Christ.
Ephesians 2:8-10 “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
Not of works, lest any man should boast.
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”
We can do nothing on our own. Our gifts, our abilities have been given to us by God. All that we are, and any gifts that we possess are not things that come from our own goodness or talent. I always like it when I watch a sporting event and at the end of the game of one of the star players of the game is being interviewed and they start off with thanking the Lord for giving them the ability to perform at such a high level, because they know that without Him they are nothing. They recognize that their “greatness” doesn’t come from themselves, but it is a gift from God.
We are saved by grace, through faith. We aren’t saved by an accomplishment that we can achieve. We cannot do something to merit salvation. We are not saved because we are “good enough.” The only reason that we are saved from the destruction and punishment for our sins is because of His grace and when we have faith in Him.
Without Jesus, we are nothing. The only reason that anyone can be in Heaven is because of the things that Jesus has done.
Romans 3:23-27 “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:
Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;
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.”
This is something that the world does. “I’m great because I did this. I did that. I am who I am today because I earned my way to the top.” Really, this is why the Law of the Old Testament was there in the first place, first to show that no one could actually be “good enough” to merit salvation, and second, after someone realized that they were not “good enough” to show that the only way to receive eternal life is to have faith in Jesus Christ and His grace.
We are saved though grace, through faith. Not because of what we can do, but because of what Jesus did.
In Christ,
Andrew
Teufer Lake King James Bible Church 