Monthly Thought

April 2009

Right, strap your selves in and get concentrating because this could be a little meandering and may tend to ramble in places but there will be a good point at the end.

I was watching “My Name is Earl” recently and as some of you may know it’s about a guy who is trying to do good stuff to cover up the bad stuff he has done, he’s following the rules of karma. This got me thinking about conversations I have had with non-Christian friends about other religions. Jesus said “I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me”. My friends often had a problem with this view, that Christianity was the only right way to God and I think this is quite a common objection.

Now I’m not an expert on other world religions but I know that Christianity has a big difference from all the other ones, it tells us that we can’t get to heaven/be with God through our own merit. You can’t make yourself worthy of saving by anything you do. Every other religion requires that you do something for God in order to be saved; Christianity says we do stuff for God because we know we are already saved. I think this is pretty comforting; it doesn’t rely on me being good or me doing enough good things to get to be with god, because I sure know I’m not good enough to deserve it. In Ephesians 2:8-9 it says:

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God. Not by works, so that no one can boast.”

I think that’s a great thing, It’s not our own doing that we are saved its God and his grace. But, what is grace? I looked online and it is defined as someone’s undeserved favour towards another, basically giving someone something that they have not earned. I don’t have to earn my right to be with God, Jesus has taken away all that stops me from getting to God, all the things that I’ve done against God have been punished through Jesus on the cross.

To me, that makes more sense than me being able to earn salvation or being saved. I can’t see how doing good things makes all the bad things less bad, it’s not like I can somehow cover up the bad parts of my life if I do a bit more good. God would still be able to see the bad things that I’d done they would still be there and stop me from getting to him. Even though we do so much to hurt God he loves us SO much that he was willing to send Jesus in our place to take our punishment. We are all equally undeserving of being saved, all we need to do is accept God’s free gift. It’s not because of what we’ve done; it’s down to what God has done, which is way better than anything we can do.

Sam

If you’ve got any questions, thoughts … you can contact me on sam.mcnaughton@gmail.com