SALVATION, WORKS AND

You would not scramble five good eggs and one rotten egg and serve the mixture to guests, expecting it to be acceptable. Even less can you serve up to God a life that has the good things in it tainted with deeds and thoughts that are rotten, and expect it to be acceptable to God.

If you wanted to get to heaven by your good works, then you would have to be perfect, which means complete obedience to God at all times. But all of us have fallen short of this!1178

A leading manufacturing company developed a new cake mix that required only water to be added. Tests were run, surveys were made, and the cake mix was found to be of superior quality to the other mixes available. It tasted good, it was easy to use, and it made a moist, tender cake. The company spent large sums of money on an advertising campaign and then released the cake mix to the general market. But few people bought the new cake mix.

The company then spent more money on a survey to find out why the cake mix didn’t sell. Based on the results of this survey, the company recalled the mix, reworked the formula, and released the revised cake mix. The new cake mix required that one add not only water, but also an egg. It sold like hot cakes and is now a leading product in the field. You see, the first cake mix was just too simple to be believable. People would not accept it. The same is true of salvation by grace.1179

An old parable says, “A silly servant who is told to open the door sets his shoulder to it and pushes with all his might; but the door stirs not, and he cannot enter, use what strength he may. Another comes with a key and easily unlocks the door and enters right readily.”

Those who would be saved by works are pushing at heaven’s gate without result; but faith is the key that opens the gate at once.1180

Do you recall the last time you went to a nice restaurant with a friend? Perhaps, after a great meal, the waiter brought the check, and before you knew it your friend had paid the tab.

Do you remember how you felt? That you wanted somehow to even the score? Perhaps you vowed to pick up the tab the next time you went out? These feelings are quite natural. We like to be independent, not obligated to anyone for anything. For the natural man, the same principle carries over into the way he views religion, for the natural man tries to earn his way into God’s favor.1181

The last words of the Buddha, as he was dying, are given as, “And now, O priests, I take my leave of you; all the constituents of being are transitory; work out your salvation with diligence.”

As John Noss, the noted religion scholar explains, “Like Mahavira (founder of Jainism), the Buddha showed each disciple how to rely for salvation upon himself, on his own powers, focused upon redemption by spiritual self-discipline. Here was the strictest sort of humanism in religion.” (Cited in John Noss, Man’s Religions [New York: Macmillan, 1984], pp. 127, 129.)1182

“I began to fast twice a week for thirty-six hours together, prayed many times a day and received the sacrament every Lord’s Day. I fasted myself almost to death all the forty days of Lent, during which I made it a point of duty never to go less than three times a day to public worship, besides seven times a day to my private prayers. Yet I knew no more that I was to be born a new creature in Christ Jesus than if I had never been born at all.” (Cited in Arnold Dalimore, George Whitefield [Westchester, Ill.: Good News, 1980], Vol. 1, p. 60.)1183