Climb aboard, Jesus Christ has already purchased your ticket.
“God is recruiting volunteers now to join him as family members and partners in the loving fellowship of those taking part in a tremendously creative project, under unimaginably splendid leadership, on an inconceivably vast scale, with ever increasing cycles of fruitfulness and enjoyment,” as theologian Dallas Willard put it.
Now that’s a party I’d love to join.
Before I “got it,” I was convinced that getting to Heaven was all up to me — I had to do the earning, the obeying, the paying my own way by behaving myself.
I was my own savior, and a pitifully poor one at that. The harder I tried, the worse I got.
Then came the revelation, crashing into my consciousness and waking me up to the most stupendous message I had ever heard, from Romans 5:8-11:
“But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to Him. Now that we are set right with God by means of this sacrificial death, the consummate blood sacrifice, there is no longer a question of being at odds with God in any way. If, when we were at our worst, we were put on friendly terms with God by the sacrificial death of His Son, now that we’re at our best, just think of how our lives will expand and deepen by means of His resurrection life!”
Excuse me, but that is very good news! I was supremely qualified under the above criteria … I was “no use to Him whatever” and “at my worst.” Yet I was strangely drawn toward God’s offer to climb on board with Him. But I didn’t have a ticket “to ride,” or so I thought …
Then I saw it in black and white (and red), “having now been justified by His blood.”
That’s the ticket, Christ’s blood, as written in Hebrews 9:10-15:
“But when the Messiah arrived, high priest of the superior things of this new covenant … using His own blood as the price to set us free once and for all … Through the Spirit, Christ offered himself as an unblemished sacrifice, freeing us from all those dead-end efforts to make ourselves respectable, so that we can live all out for God.”
Now don’t be put off by all this “blood” talk. As noted in Leviticus 17:10-12, the blood simply symbolizes the life of Christ, “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement.”
This explains why the shed blood and broken body of Christ is so precious to true believers. It represents His life given in exchange for theirs.
Note the past tense of all the “work” Christ did for us. It gives fresh meaning to His booming declaration from the cross, “It is finished.” He did “the work” for me. I could get out of my religious squirrel cage and rest — not in my own works, but in the Work of Christ on the cross for me, as written in Hebrews 4:9-10, “Consequently … For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His.”
Get it? The victory over sin is won by Christ, and its yours to claim for yourself by faith.
Don’t wait, the ship will sail regardless.
Authentic deathbed conversions are extremely rare. That’s because people who wait until the last minute have been saying “No” to God for far too long. While God remains willing, the will of man possesses limited “elasticity,” and can bend away from God too far.
Again, Dallas Willard, “Hell is not an ‘oops!’ or a slip. One does not miss heaven by a hair, but by constant effort to avoid and escape God. Outer darkness is for one who, everything said, wants it, whose entire orientation has slowly and firmly set itself against God and therefore against how the universe actually is.”
How About You?
If you feel that tug at your heart when hearing this good news, don’t postpone your response. Your heart can get calloused, making it harder to feel the gentle promptings of God’s Holy Spirit.
I wonder how many people met unexpected deaths, leaving their gospel ticket lying on their “good intentions” pile.
“… we also urge you not to receive the grace of God in vain — for He says,
‘At a favorable time, I listened to you,
And on a day of salvation I helped you.’
Behold, now is ‘a favorable time,’ behold, now is ‘a day of salvation.’”
— 2 Corinthians 6:1-3
Welcome aboard.
— D.C. Collier is a Bible teacher, discipleship mentor and writer focused on Christian apologetics. A mechanical engineer and internet entrepreneur, he is the author of My Origin, My Destiny, a book focused on Christianity’s basic “value proposition.” Click here for more information, or contact him at don@peervalue.com. Click here for previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.