Arrive alive

I heard the other day that there are over 40,000 different religions in the world. Hmmm What do you suppose separates all of those belief systems from Christianity?

The thing that is foremost in my mind is that all of them require their followers to do something in order to ultimately achieve their concept of heaven. Like a general ledger system the good stuff gets debited and the bad gets credited.

At the end of the day, all of these belief systems require that one must work their way into heaven and the good must outweigh the bad. Far too many people believe that because they are really not that bad of a person that they will coast into heaven, or vice versa.

Others believe that they can follow some ritual and chant a few prayers, and/or pay a holy man to allow them to confess their sins to him, and he will pray for them, and forgive them and that will get them there.

Not so in Christianity. We cannot be good enough to earn our way into heaven nor will some cleansing ritual or holy man clean us up in God’s sight. It is what Jesus Christ did that is important.

Our reality is that no matter how hard one tries to follow God’s laws we cannot abide by them all and sooner or later *all* of us will commit sin in our lives. God is so holy and righteous that He cannot tolerate any sin, not even one, and there must be a penalty exacted for every sin. The penalty for even one sin is severe; it requires a death sentence and eternal separation from God. God is a righteous judge and His laws cannot be violated without being punished. He cannot be lenient, nor bend the rules due to His perfect and holy nature.

God found a way for imperfect man to achieve God’s perfection. Jesus came to earth in the form of a man and lived a *perfect* life without even one sin and when He gave His life in exchange for ours on the cross, His death and sacrifice proved to be the sole acceptable payment for the sin debt of those who accept Him as their Savior.

We are free from our death sentence solely because of Jesus Christ taking our punishment for us. It is not what we do to earn freedom. We are free because Jesus gave it to us as His free gift.

My explanation is clumsy at best. Jesus quite eloquently stated the summation of the Christian belief system below. Please note that not one word mentions that if we will simply do good, or be good, or pay some holy man to pray over us, or follow some ritual, or chant some incantation that we will arrive alive in heaven Jesus is our only gateway to heaven. Believe!

John 14:6
Jesus said to him, “I am the way,
the truth, and the life. No one
comes to the Father except through
Me.