Living by Faith

Well, everybody is always trying to put a new twist the same old lie. Satan has said for millennia fabricated the myth that the blood of Christ alone is not enough to save our pitiful souls. If he can't convince us that we don't need Jesus, he tries to convince us that, yes, we need Jesus, but he isn't quite enough. Oh, sure, most Christian denominations will never say the words, "Jesus alone is not enough," but they will talk out of both sides of their mouths and teach that heresy indirectly or directly.

I was in a discussion with an Apostolic Pentecostal, (not to point fingers, but just as a case in point,) and his spin is that you don't have to earn your salvation through "good works" but that to keep it, you must keep your faith. Lose your faith; lose your salvation. And, just for good measure, I suppose, he threw in that, in his view, a Christian can reject God, thereby losing his salvation in that manner. Same old, same old.

How nice it must be to live in a world of never doubting. To live a life where your faith is never shaken to its foundations. To never look up at the heavens, even as a born-again Christian, and wonder if there really is a Heaven waiting out there. If your faith has never wavered, it's never been tested.

We're only human. Our salvation, thank God, is not based on our works, faith, baptism, consistency or any other thing you can name involving what we can do. We have been made the "sons of God" through His power and as his sons, we have an inheritance that cannot be lost no matter how stupid we are and, yes, we are all pretty stupid.

We are not the mature Christians that we like to think we are; we are all just babies to our Heavenly Father. We are his property and cannot "chose" to abandon him. Even the Prodigal Son remained the son of his father and when he "came to himself," he realized where he actually belonged and was welcomed home with open arms.

Fortunately, our faith is not based on our puny little human psyches or our pathetic inability to retain our faith and trust in our Father. We live by His faith! He knows we are incapable of any good thing, including faith. He gives us everything! Only if we accept His sacrifice as a substitute for our sins.

Sadly, in our arrogance, we refuse to believe that there is absolutely nothing we can do to affect our salvation or our blessings from the Father. We conceitedly reject that there is nothing left to do. We discount the truth that salvation is completely and utterly out of our hands. We never consider that "save" and "keep" are synonyms. (Maybe we should occasionally read the dictionary.)

In the words of the great, old hymn that many of our churches sing regularly:

"Jesus paid it all! All to Him I owe.
Sin had left a crimson stain;
He washed it white as snow."


I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. Galations 2:20