Jesus is Lord (Daily Refresh, 12-27)

No matter how good you are, how hard you try, or how decent of a person you attempt to be, when it comes to following Christ, you can’t earn your way to God. You can’t do enough good things to tip the scales in your favor. You can’t buy, win, impress, or manipulate your way into salvation. 

But Jesus has already purchased your freedom on a cross and offered it to you as a gift. 

But you do have one job, as Paul describes in his letter to the Romans…

“If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
‭‭Romans‬ ‭10‬:‭9‬ ‭NIV

Many people believe that Jesus was a real, historical person. Many people believe that Jesus was a genuinely good man. But the Bible says that even the demons believe there’s only one God—and shudder (James 2:19).

Minutes before their deaths, two criminals hung next to Jesus on the cross. One of the criminals mocked Him, but the other one trusted in Him. Jesus told the one who trusted Him that he would soon be in Heaven. He received grace.

You see, we’ve all sinned and fallen short of God’s holy standard. We all need His grace, but we haven’t all received His grace.

So are you trying to be good enough for God? The bad news is, you can’t. You can’t ever be good enough on your own. But the great news is, Jesus has already made a way. However, you can’t simply know that He was a real person or think that some of His teachings were nice.

But the most important question remains: Will you make Him the Lord of your life?

My Thoughts

There are multiple people in my family who have the philosophy that I also grew up with, that if I am “good” then one day I will go to heaven. I didn’t find out until I finished college and a neighbor presented the gospel to me that I found out that you can never be good enough to go to heaven because being “good” is not how to get there. There is one way to heaven, and that is by accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior. Some people are so accustomed to having enough money to buy anything that they want, they may have convinced themselves that they can buy their way into heaven. A definite false belief since God has no need for money. After all, He who created and owns everything doesn’t need our wealth if we have it. Others think that they are such savvy negotiators that they can talk their way into heaven, perhaps at the last minute. That seems to give them permission to live however they want and then talk to the Gatekeeper and enter into heaven. Again, not the way God established His world and the “ticket” into salvation. Once we accept Christ as Lord and Savior, then we want to do good works because we want to be more like Christ. We aren’t so worried about gathering riches on earth because we know that they don’t last. And we are more careful about what we say because we know that we represent our Savior and will one day account for all of our words. So, the bottom line is that salvation is your choice now, today, not the minute when you die and stand before God. You need to make that choice before you face your Creator. Being good isn’t what God seeks; He wants sold out, absolute surrender to Him. Sounds scary, but it’s really not because at the bottom of what God wants from you is His firm foundation of love. He wants what is best for each of us, and He knows it is to choose to be with Him forever.