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The Easy Answer, And What It Actually Means
The easy answer is trusting Jesus as your personal savior today.
That is such a cliché in the church. Trusting Jesus as your personal savior, what does that actually mean?
It means accepting his work on the cross as your substitute. He took the punishment of your life upon himself, the punishment you actually deserve, by the way. Then he starts a good work in you that is beyond what you can conjure up yourself.
You will find a new life, one that is joyful in ways you cannot describe. You will start down a road called sanctification, where Jesus changes your attitudes and your desires.
Now, will you obtain perfection this side of heaven? No. But you will have a peace that passes all understanding. Will you have that peace all the time? No. But many times.
Sanctification is a growth process with many stalls and starts, but if it's authentic, it will be well with you.
No Better Than the Secular World?
Some may say the Christian world is no better than the secular world. And you want to know something? They'd be right in saying that.
Why is it that way? Why, if someone says the Christian world is no better than the secular world, according to their eyes, why would they say that?
It is that way, and that's a true statement, because many are falsely converted. There's a thing called prayerism:
- Say a little prayer and you're in the kingdom.
- You're so special. God loves you just the way you are. Don't change a thing.
- Just confess Jesus is Lord and you're in.
- Just add Jesus to what you got going on.
Or the favorite: "Jesus has a wonderful plan for your life." That line has led to more false conversions than anything else you can think of.
Here's What the Real Gospel Actually Says
Here's what the actual gospel actually says and actually is. You ready?
You and I are fallen sinners. We're sinful people. We have broken the Ten Commandments many times and we continue to do so. We are such awful, wretched beings. We are constantly focused on the evil things of the world. It's our default position.
Well, in that fallen, evil, sinful state, God loves us so much as his creation. He offers us a way out. So difficult is this way out, he had to come to Earth to do all the heavy lifting himself.
When you hear the line, "God loves you so much," please understand there is no greater love than our Creator God wanting to rescue us from that condition.
So Jesus, as both fully God and fully man, arrives at just the right time in all of human history, and then he lives a perfect life. A life that qualifies him to be the spotless lamb that could and would be sacrificed to take away the sins of mankind.
Then, after the substitutionary death on the cross, taking my punishment upon himself, he goes into the tomb. But not to stay there. The resurrection gives him the power over death, hell, and the grave, and he offers it to each of us as a free gift.
Where the Disconnection Happens
Here's where the disconnection is for some. We don't recognize ourselves as being sinners and in need of a savior. Then what exactly are we receiving?
People are generally virtuous? No. People are genuinely sinful. If we are basically good people, then maybe I'll try this Jesus thing on for a while, and if it doesn't go well, well, whatever.
People in this falsely converted state always seem a little discontented. They always are looking for the next thing. Always trying to seek and obtain special revelation. Many become consumer Christians and always church hopping, and many get sucked up into the latest religious fad.
To be soundly saved, one of the first things that goes away is immense love for self. You see, you will recognize yourself as you really are. And now, you will hold on tight to Jesus because you know, you know.
Can there be traces of narcissism still around the soundly saved person? Of course. But it gets less and less than it was before. And throughout this growth process, the sanctification process, each child of God will continue with the I must decrease and he must increase. Because you start to see it. Honestly, you see it.
Standing With the Remnant Church
Fresh Road Media is a listener-supported outreach broadcast, a 501(c)(3). One of the resources this ministry offers is Bible Sidekick, a book written basically at a seventh-grade reading level, like four or five seminary books condensed into one 500-page volume. It covers all 66 books of the Bible and so much more, and it has been helping people.
Coming this fall, more teaching will continue on this platform, along with other brothers around the country doing outstanding work, because this platform exists to grow in the Lord Jesus Christ for such a time as this. And you know what time that is.
It's late, and the hour is near that the Lord could be returning. So we need to rise up and be strong in our faith.
Ephesians 6:12 says we don't fight against flesh and blood, but we fight against this present darkness which is coming over the land, and therefore we put on the full armor of God.
That's the call: to stand as part of the remnant church, holding fast against the darkness of this age.