LIE: Christ’s Perfect Sacrifice Was Not Enough For Me or The Whole World!
If you are wired at all like us, you will have a very hard time “Living Fully Alive” without settling eternity in your heart! Understanding God, the Bible, humanity, and the gospel seemed to be vitally important in our lives as we began this journey and it is now what fuels our passion. We actually discovered that the gospel is actually “good news” and is better than we thought. (Don’t panic – we are not doing an alter call here or trying to get you saved or re-saved; we are simply trying to share with you what we have discovered.)
Growing up, we both learned that God initially loved us, but because of sin and our “flesh” (humanness), we would spend the rest of our lives trying to perfect, change, prove, earn, and strive to keep that love flowing. We were taught to look through the lens of “positional righteousness.” We were told that our spirits were made righteous when we accepted Christ into our hearts but the rest of us was on a life long soul cleansing journey that determined how connected we would be to God. What this looked like in our lives was “The better I behave, the more time I spend doing holy things, the more I become perfect in every way determines how much of God I have in my life and where I will end up for eternity.” Just like the first original sin in the garden, we were trying to be Christ-like through our own efforts; trying to obtain the free gift of grace through works is a sure fire way to wind up on the hamster wheel of hopelessness. But we have great news for you – that is not the gospel! Jesus is the totality of the gospel. Let us explain:
Salvation created our identity and nothing is greater than what Jesus did for us on the cross. He secured our righteousness, holiness, relationship with the Father, and our eternity when He stepped into our place and gave His life for us. Because of Jesus we now stand securely in God’s pleasure. We have actually been crucified with Christ, we are now dead to sin, and we are a living breathing new creation that was resurrected when He was resurrected. It’s all a gift, an unmerited one, given to us through Christ’s perfect sacrifice. Nothing we did gave us righteousness and salvation and nothing we do can take it away. Now, not only are we saved and made righteous, but the fullness of God dwells within us. What we could not do, work through the law to obtain righteousness, holiness, God’s pleasure, and a secure eternity with the Godhead, Jesus did for all humanity when He became flesh, took on the sin of the world, gave His life on the cross, and was resurrected into glory.
That’s it! It’s really that simple! Jesus is enough! He finished His work and what He did was enough for every human being that ever has been and ever will be on this planet.
