Welcome to Security

So more than once I have spelled out the truth of the Gospel in these pages.  That we cannot earn our way into God's good graces through anything we either try to do or try not to do.  That salvation comes in the form of a free gift from God Himself through faith in Jesus Christ.  Grace is what saves us.  Grace being something given that is not earned for we cannot earn salvation nor do we deserve it.  When all that we are and do is measured against a perfect and holy God, we fall so terribly short.  But what of after we have accepted that gift?  Does grace still apply?  Do we live by faith or must we perform to a certain standard in order to maintain our newly found position in Christ Jesus?

It is unfortunate that there are no few who believe the answer to that last question is "yes".

Scripture tells us that "the righteous shall live by faith" (Romans 1:17).  Since we know that we are saved by faith, how then can we come to believe that we must take over the reins after we are saved?  After all, it is not our righteousness in the first place but that of Christ which covers us after we have come to Him.  His blood, His sacrifice not our own.

Some may quote verses from the book of James to prove that we must perform in order to hold our salvation.  Verses such as “What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith, but has no deeds? Can such a faith save him” (James 2:14).  However, as we read further along we come to realize that James is addressing those people who claim to be saved yet seemingly have no problem ignoring the needs of those around them.  A far cry from Christ’s second commandment to us in Matthew 22:39 to love our neighbor as ourselves.

Another place that some may go to is found in 2 Peter 3:17 which reads "... be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of lawless men and fall from your secure position."  If you have not read the book of 2 Peter, I shall fill in some details for you.  No small portion of the book is speaking about false teachers who speak and teach things that are apart from the gospel of grace.  People such as these are spoken of by the apostle Paul in the book of Colossians:  “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ” (Colossians 2:8).  He speaks more on this topic a few verses later:  “Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence” (Colossians 2:23).

The secure position that we are warned we may fall from is NOT from the grace of God and/or our salvation.  It is, instead, from our knowledge of the truth.  That we may become caught up into some rule or work based philosophy that not only does us no good but even can take us captive and place us into bondage yet again.

I have a question for those who feel as though they can lose their salvation if they either do not do enough good or do too much bad:  How much is enough and/or how much is too much?  I mean really, to what standard must you maintain in order to hold onto your own salvation?  After all, we are told (quite clearly) to not compare ourselves to anyone else since we are all different and each person's relationship with God is different due to that fact.  Doing so frequently ends up with us judging everyone and anyone, including ourselves.  So if not another, and we know we cannot use ourselves as a base point to measure by, then it must be God's standard.

God's standard.  Really??

We (should know we) are not even close to being in His league.  Saved or not we are far from being God and to use Him as a base by which to measure ourselves means we will always, and I do mean always, fall massively short of the mark.

Do you believe that if you sneak a glimpse of that well built jogger running past your house one too many times that God is going to change His mind about having saved you?  "Uh, oh.  That was last time you got to check them out.  You are too much of a pervert for heaven so I have changed my mind".  Or perhaps you have not done enough good works to hang onto salvation?  You know, you could not earn or deserve salvation before, you cannot do so now.

 I heard a gentleman (John Lynch) speak on a television program a little while back and he put it this way:  We have two choices, two paths we can choose from.  We may either choose to live our lives attempting to please God or we may live our lives trusting God.  Since we are human, the first path does not tend to work out the best for us since we always fall short.  But trusting Him, on the other hand...