I was driving along flipping channels when I came upon a Christian radio station. A minister was giving a spiritual thought in which he said, "Don't let works get in the way of your salvation. If you are performing works you are relying on your own strength to save you, rather than Jesus. So don't let works get in the way of your salvation."
This all too common sentiment illustrates a classic misunderstanding of the reason we have come to Earth. In fact, works don’t save us they change us. This is what our Christian brothers and sisters don’t understand about our faith. The works we perform are not meant to purchase eternity. They are meant change us into beings that can endure eternity.
Consider the parable of the widow’s mite. The Lord glorified the two farthings that the widow gave to the church because she gave all that she had. Yet, Jesus mocked the rich who technically performed the same work because they gave of their great abundance. In other words, it was no sacrifice for them. This parable is a perfect illustration of how the work itself is not glorified but rather the change it causes in us. A change that we only experience through the sacrifice of our will for his.
Imagine if the widow, rather than giving all she had to the church, would have simply “confessed Jesus” and went on her way expecting to be saved without giving or sacrificing.
We are the accumulation of the experiences we have in this life. We cannot be saved without works. Because it is not the works themselves, but the change those works cause in us that alters our prospects for salvation.
Alma 5:18-19
18. …can ye imagine yourselves brought before the tribunal of God with your souls filled with guilt and remorse, having a remembrance of all your guilt, yea, a perfect remembrance of all your wickedness, yea, a remembrance that ye have set at defiance the commandments of God?
19. I say unto you, can ye look up to God at that day with a pure heart and clean hands? I say unto you, can you look up, having the image of God engraven upon your countenances?
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Took me a day or so to have a chance to read this (I was thrown by the new name on the side bar). :0) Good one! We can get so mixed up with what things really mean!
ReplyDeleteThis life is not about some one doing the work for you. I think that people believe religion is like playing the lottery. Pick the winning number and you get heaven regardless of what you've done previously in your life. But let's take a look at what happens to people who win the lottery. They go bankrupt in a couple of years and owe more than they won. The same would be true if God were to dump eternal salvation on anyone who said the magic saving phrase.
ReplyDeleteSo imagine then what happens when you give some one access to everything in heaven. Can we believe that just because they are in heaven they will stop doing all the things they have done their whole life? No, they will do it more and worse than ever before.
And then the belief that God will make them good and so they won't have to worry about it comes to light. Well, what is the greatest gift God has given us? Free agency. To believe that you are saved without works is to believe God will deprive us of our free agency when we get to heaven.
God can not and will not deprive us of this gift. We can choose to give it up through sin, or by allowing ourselves to be deceived into believing something that binds us. But He will never take it away, or ruin our souls by forcing us to be good.