There are 40,000 verities of religions on this planet, and all 40,000 boil down to three essential forms:
- Salvation by works alone
- Salvation by faith plus works, or
- Salvation by faith alone.
- Salvation by Works Alone. Most of the 40,000 different religions fall into this classification of salvation by works alone. You hear testimonies like this all the time:
- “I know I am not perfect, but I have tried to live a good life and been a good person.”
- I try to follow the 10 Commandments and the Golden Rule – well, most of them, any way.
- Buddhists say “I follow the 8-fold path of Buddha.”
- “I follow the teachings of Confucius.”
- “I follow Mohammed and the Koran.”
The reasoning goes like this: If I do enough good works, God will receive me into heaven. The goal of the Hindu is to accumulate enough karma (good works) which will enable him to have a good rebirth (reincarnation) after he dies until he finally escapes the cycles of rebirth and achieves NIRVANA – a state of blissful nothingness.
Characteristics of Work-Centered Religion:
- The focus is on what I can do to save myself.
- Works salvation is the view of every pagan religion.
- “Justification by works seems right unto man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” (Prov. 14:22)
TO TRUST YOUR OWN GOOD WORKS FOR SALVATION IS PURE UNADULTERATED PAGANISM. Yet millions of nominal Christians in America hope to get into heaven by their works.
- Salvation By Faith Plus Works. This view is help by most cults and by Roman Catholicism. This view says that salvation is the result of what Christ did plus what I do. “It is as if Jesus comes down and together He and I establish a Salvation Corporation, a partnership designed to save me. So He gets some of the glory and I get some of the glory. Did you spot the flaw in that scenario? It is a glaring one! The fact is that Jesus Chris will not share His glory with another. He is the Lord. And everything that needs to be done to secure our salvation, He already accomplished on the Cross.”[1] Some appeal to James chapter 2, which says man is justified by works, but in the passage James is talking about the justification of faith before men, whereas Paul talks about our justification before God.
Faith plus works cannot save you. Your salvation cannot be 50% Christ and 50% you. It can’t be 60/40 or 75/25 or even 99.99/.01. You are saved by Christ alone. “If we had to put one stitch in the garment of salvation, we would ruin the whole thing.” (Spurgeon). Paul declares that we are saved “by grace through faith and that not of ourselves, lest we boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9). If we could earn our salvation, we would strut around heaven fro all eternity bragging about how good we were on earth to achieve our place in heaven. “I am reminded of the story (purely fictional, of course) about a man who died and went to Heaven. There he was greeted by Peter, who said, “You want to get into Heaven? Okay, here’s how we play the game. You tell me some of the good things you’ve done, and I’ll tell you how many points you get for each one. If you get a hundred points, you get in.”
“Okay,” said the man, a little dubiously. “I think I understand.” He had never heard before that there was a game for getting into Heaven.
“All right,” said Peter. “Now, tell me: What good things have you done?”
“Well, said the man, thinking back over his life, “I’ve lived with one woman for fifty years and have never been unfaithful.”
“Marvelous!” said Peter. “That’s two points.”
“Only two points?” said the man, his brow furrowing in concern.
“Boy, this is going to be tougher than I thought.” He reflected some more, then said, “Well, I went to church every week and never missed a Sunday. I went to Sunday School, too. I have perfect attendance pins that go all the way down to my knee.”
“Excellent,” said Peter. “That’s another three points.”
At this point, the man got exasperated. “That’s all? Just three lousy points? Why, at this rate, it’s going to take the grace of God Himself to get me through those gates!”
“Bingo!” said Peter. “One hundred points. Come on it.”[2]
- Salvation by Faith Alone– The natural man looks at life and morality as a kind of ledger in which good deeds are recorded as assets and bad deeds are deducted from the good. No, God’s standard is not the ledger of life. His standard is sinless perfection, “Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48). By this standard no man will ever make it. But God in Christ offers us His perfect righteousness to get us into heaven, and Christ must be appropriated by trusting Him and Him alone. (2 Cor. 5:21).
- While We Are Not Saved by Works, We Are Saved for Good Works. Ephesians 2:8-10, “ For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” Thus true faith and obedience are inseparable, for while works do not save us, but if we are truly saved we will work out of the gratitude of our hearts to show we love God. Illus: I have tried to win many to Christ who complained that salvation by faith alone is too easy. “There has to be more than mere faith.” Suppose you encounter such a person. Say to him, “Do you know what I did last week to earn eternal life.” “No,” he said, “Please tell me.” “Absolutely nothing.” I said. “And do you know I plan to do next week to gain eternal life?” “What?” “Nothing.”
“In fact, I haven’t done one thing in my entire life. And I don’t’ plan to ever do a single thing to get eternal life. Why? Because I already have it. More than forty years ago, eternal life was given to me as a gift.
He pondered that for a moment, and I added, “Of course, this last week I did try to show my gratitude to Christ for giving me that gift. And this week I also plan to try to show my gratitude and love to Christ for what He has done for me. But I don’t plan to do anything to try to gain eternal life, because Christianity is not about trying; it’s about trusting. If you want eternal life, you have to stop trying, my friend, and start trusting in Jesus Christ.
Are you trying to earn your way to Heaven? If so, stop! The only thing you can earn for all eternity is death. That’s the bad news: The wages of sin is death. We are all sinners, and if we get what we earn, we collect a paycheck of death – physical death, spiritual death, eternal death. But now the Good news: The free, unearned, gracious gift of God is eternal life, paid for in full by Jesus Christ.”[3]
[1] D. James Kennedy, Solving Bible Mysteries, Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2000, pp. 193-194
[2] Ibid. pp. 204-205
[3] Ibid. pp. 206-207.