a. Good Works.
Most people feel that they must do good works in order to earn
favor with God. Every major religion of the world except Christianity
encourages good works in order to earn one’s way into heaven or a higher
spiritual state. Christianity is unique. Christianity holds that Christ has
already done the good work. Christ died to save us from the penalty of sin. To
be saved, we simply need to believe in Jesus. When we have such Biblical faith,
we repent of our sin (turn away from our sin) and follow the teaching of Jesus.
We are saved by the grace of God through faith in order to do good works.
8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this
not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9not by works, so that no one can
boast. 10For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good
works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2:8-10 NIV)
When a person thinks that his good works will get him into heaven,
I say,“God is perfect and he expects that anyone who enters his Kingdom will be
completely without sin. But we are all sinners. None of us are perfect.Trying
to be perfect is like trying to swim across an ocean. All of us fail at some
point. Only Christ lived a perfectly sinless life. By trusting in Christ, we
are saved. And as we love Christ, we then want to do good works.
Christianity is more of a relationship than it is a religion. A
religion typically presents a set of rules to follow in order to be holy.
Christianity is about a relationship of faith with God through his Son. Christ
is the unique Son of God. He is always superior to us. But believers are
adopted children of God (see John 1:12; Romans 8:14-16). Christ is our Elder Brother,
and we are joint heirs of eternal life with Christ (see Romans 8:17). We are
children of God through faith, so good works do not make us more of a child or
less of a child. I explain it this way, “A child is born to a father. If the
child does not do good deeds, is the child not his child? The child is still
his own. If the child does good deeds, is the child his in some greater way?
No, the child is his child without regard to good deeds.” But if the child
loves the father, the child wants to do things pleasing to the father.
Christianity is about a relationship
of love between God and his children. When a person believes in
Christ,that person is adopted into the family of God. This adoption is more
than a legal adoption. When a child is adopted into God’s family, the child is born
anew—he is spiritually born again.
Even though we can’t earn salvation, we must still repent of our
sins. We repent by turning away from a sinful lifestyle. While we are in the body, we always will sin, but we can mature
so that we sin less and less.Three words that summarize coming to Christ are
repent, believe, and confess. We repent of sin, believe in the sacrifice of
Christ, and confess that Jesus is Lord. (For details and for free course visit <www.missionstraining.org>)
