“There is none righteous, not even one;
There is none who understands,
There is none who seeks for God;
All have turned aside, together they have become useless;
There is none who does good,
There is not even one.” Romans 3:10-12
I grew up being told that “good” people go to heaven. You have to hope that your good deeds outweigh the bad. I was also told that certain sins would guarantee you hell. There are many that believe this not knowing what their future holds; but hoping that they will see heaven when they die.
Salvation is not about escaping hell and going to heaven. That was never God’s purpose to begin with. When Adam sinned and man fell; and our relationship with God was lost. God is our creator and sin separates us from a relationship with Him.
It wasn’t enough that our sins were restored but our relationship be restored with our Father. The problem is we do not desire a relationship with God. It is not in our sinful nature to seek after God or to do good. The sinful nature is evil and this is the truth we have to come to realize before we can truly understand and embrace the message of the cross. There is no one who is righteous, no not one.
Salvation is about saving one’s soul that is dead in sin. A dead soul cannot respond to God. A person must be “made alive” in Christ to begin to seek and want God. Jesus didn’t come to just wash our sins away but to restore our relationship and fellowship with the Father our creator.
So salvation deals with more than the question of heaven or hell but it deals with the radical transformation of the human condition and heart. God knows this. God knows our hearts; if we are left to our own choices and understanding would never choose Him. So God designed a plan not to just save us but to make us a “new” creation that would seek after Him for a real relationship and intimacy that God intended to have with man from the very beginning.
If the only reason you believe Jesus is to escape hell then you missed the message and the purpose of the gospel; for even the demons believe and they tremble (James 2:19).
Reflections 