The disciples said to him, “Then who can be saved?”
Mark 10:26
Here is the second truth we see in this story: Salvation involves a real change in which a person becomes good like God.
One major problem that we face in the church today is that we have separated what God joined together.
Salvation is reduced to a formula that is believed without making a difference to a person’s life. It is a change in your destiny without a change in your soul or in your behaviour.
One reason the word “evangelical” is held in such disrepute is that to many people, evangelicals are people who think that they are saved by holding certain beliefs, even though these beliefs make little or no difference to their lives.
You won’t find that in the Bible. It’s not what we believe. We need to demonstrate real change through lives that are distinctively marked by goodness that reflects the character of God.
Christ died so that we might be forgiven. He died to make us good, that we might go at last to heaven, saved by His precious blood. Too often the gospel has been reduced to forgiveness and heaven. What happened to “He died to make us good?”
Dr. Alan Redpath put it this way: If you have an unclean life, you have an unchanged heart. If you have an unchanged heart, you have an unsaved soul.
Beware of reducing salvation to a decision, especially in the way that you teach your children. Salvation involves a real change in which a person becomes good like God.
In what ways might you be separating what God has joined together? How might your life better reflect the biblical teaching of both forgiveness and real change?
