It is a dangerous thing to mistake religion for salvation. You can join a church, memorize a creed, perform rituals, tithe, sing hymns, recite prayers, confess sins, and still die in your sins. You can be baptized, confirmed, ordained, and even canonized, and still remain as lost as Anton Levey. At the end of all things, it will not matter what ceremonies you attended or how many candles you lit. The great and final question will be this: Did you trust in Jesus Christ alone for your salvation?
Christianity is not a ladder for the righteous to climb. It is a cross where guilty men kneel and live. It is not a contest for the strong; it is a rescue for the dead. There is a truth so simple and so severe that human pride almost cannot bear it: God exists, holy and just, and we have rebelled against Him. The price of our rebellion is death, and no man can pay it off by good intentions or desperate effort. But God Himself, moved by love, took on flesh and in the person of Jesus Christ, He bore our sins in His own body on the tree. He died. He was buried and He rose again the third day in accordance with scripture.
This is the good news. The man who simply believes it; believes that Christ died for him and rose for him and now saves him by grace alone is justified before God forever. No wages are paid to him. No merits are considered. It is all gift, all mercy, from first to last.
You may dress up the gospel in a thousand ribbons and rites, but it will not change. Christ saves the one who comes with empty hands and with nothing to offer. He will not save the one who brings Him good works in one hand and faith in the other, as though faith were merely the final stone atop a human monument. Christ plus anything is not Christianity. It is unbelief with a Christian mask.
Now some will ask, "What of those who believe but later fall into error? What of the man who, having trusted Christ, is swept into legalism or deceived by false teaching?" We must answer carefully. The Bible speaks plainly: salvation is by grace through faith, not of works. The believer is sealed, justified, and placed into the Body of Christ. He may suffer loss. He may darken his understanding. He may stumble like a blind man in a bright room, but he cannot be unsaved. Christ has purchased him, and Christ will lose none whom the Father has given Him. Error will rob him of joy, of liberty, of reward, but not of Christ. If salvation could be lost, it would have been lost a thousand times over, but salvation is not the fragile work of man; it is the finished work of God.
Thus, the line between life and death is clear and sharp: The man who trusts in Christ alone is saved forever. The man who trusts in Christ plus anything else is still lost. This is the scandal of the cross, the stone over which the religious stumble. The gospel allows no pride, no boasting, no negotiations. It demands that a man come naked of his own merit, stripped of his supposed righteousness, and throw himself utterly upon the mercy of Another. If you will not come that way, you do not come at all and no church, no sacrament, no priest, no denomination can make up the difference.
It is Christ, and Christ alone,
His life exchanged to buy our own.
Not one jot more, nor tittle less;
All else is ruin, all else is death.
Christianity is not a ladder for the righteous to climb. It is a cross where guilty men kneel and live. It is not a contest for the strong; it is a rescue for the dead. There is a truth so simple and so severe that human pride almost cannot bear it: God exists, holy and just, and we have rebelled against Him. The price of our rebellion is death, and no man can pay it off by good intentions or desperate effort. But God Himself, moved by love, took on flesh and in the person of Jesus Christ, He bore our sins in His own body on the tree. He died. He was buried and He rose again the third day in accordance with scripture.
This is the good news. The man who simply believes it; believes that Christ died for him and rose for him and now saves him by grace alone is justified before God forever. No wages are paid to him. No merits are considered. It is all gift, all mercy, from first to last.
You may dress up the gospel in a thousand ribbons and rites, but it will not change. Christ saves the one who comes with empty hands and with nothing to offer. He will not save the one who brings Him good works in one hand and faith in the other, as though faith were merely the final stone atop a human monument. Christ plus anything is not Christianity. It is unbelief with a Christian mask.
Now some will ask, "What of those who believe but later fall into error? What of the man who, having trusted Christ, is swept into legalism or deceived by false teaching?" We must answer carefully. The Bible speaks plainly: salvation is by grace through faith, not of works. The believer is sealed, justified, and placed into the Body of Christ. He may suffer loss. He may darken his understanding. He may stumble like a blind man in a bright room, but he cannot be unsaved. Christ has purchased him, and Christ will lose none whom the Father has given Him. Error will rob him of joy, of liberty, of reward, but not of Christ. If salvation could be lost, it would have been lost a thousand times over, but salvation is not the fragile work of man; it is the finished work of God.
Thus, the line between life and death is clear and sharp: The man who trusts in Christ alone is saved forever. The man who trusts in Christ plus anything else is still lost. This is the scandal of the cross, the stone over which the religious stumble. The gospel allows no pride, no boasting, no negotiations. It demands that a man come naked of his own merit, stripped of his supposed righteousness, and throw himself utterly upon the mercy of Another. If you will not come that way, you do not come at all and no church, no sacrament, no priest, no denomination can make up the difference.
It is Christ, and Christ alone,
His life exchanged to buy our own.
Not one jot more, nor tittle less;
All else is ruin, all else is death.
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