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 SALVATION BY GOD ALONE

Luke 18:22-27 “When Jesus heard his answer, he said, “There is still one thing you haven’t done. Sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” But when the man heard this, he became very sad, for he was very rich.  When Jesus saw this, He said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God! In fact, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!” Those who heard this said, “Then who in the world can be saved?” He replied, “What is impossible for people is possible with God.”

One of the biggest offenses of the Gospel, if not the main offense, is the direct assault on raw human pride. We want to succeed in life, to know everything we can, unaided, independent, on our own, so that all that might be counted as success will bring glory to us and no other. Left to ourselves, we live in rebellion against the One who created us and has meaning and purpose for us to know and live. Being spiritually dead, most people fail to recognize that darkness is working in them and all social ills, sorrows and injustice are the fruit of our rebellion against the Lord God.

The passage from the Gospel of Luke is the story of a wealthy religious leader who asks Jesus what he needs to do to have eternal life. Jesus states that one must be able to keep all the Law of Moses. The fellow states that he has kept the Law since he was young. The truth of the matter is that it is humanly impossible to keep the Law perfectly, to be sinless. There was only One Person who lived a sinless life and the religious leader was speaking to Him.

Jesus saw a man who wanted to honor God with his life and went to the heart of the issue. Would the man ground his confidence and hope in God or in himself. Jesus tells him to sell all he has and distribute it to the poor and then come and follow Him. The man’s heart was revealed in that sadness filled him and he was faced with the reality of the true idol of his heart that he was not willing to abandon. And so, the man walked away from eternal life.

When Jesus saw this, He said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God! In fact, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!”

Jesus Christ is making it very clear that if one trusts is anything other than God to salvage one from the deadness of the human condition, one faces an eternal impossibility. It would be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for anyone, idolaters that we are, who trusts in riches, in power, in position, prestige, education or anything other than God, Himself, to be saved.

Then comes the hopeless cry, “Those who heard this said, “Then who in the world can be saved?” The horror dawns on them all that there is nothing they can do to be saved. It isn’t religious leadership, financial success, hard work, or any human achievement that could ever come close to saving a human being from the sin and death that was at work in them.

Jesus tells them the heart of the matter. Salvation comes from God alone. “He replied, “What is impossible for people is possible with God.” THAT was why God, the Eternal Son, the Eternal Word of God became flesh, fully human, fully God, the Lamb of God who alone would be able to take away the sin of the world.

Salvation is only possible with God. God saves, restores, and redeems a person. God enables a person to face the reality of the deadness of their heart, acknowledge their idols, gifting them with grace to turn from trusting themselves, repenting of their sin and trusting the Lord to give them a new life, a new heart.

That truth declared by Jesus Christ sets us free from senseless and ineffective striving to earn or achieve anything to change the spiritual essence of our personal spiritual deadness. We can rest in the humility that comes from wisdom and with open hands and hearts receive from God that which is given as a gift and only received by God’s grace through the instrumentality of faith. We trust that God has done for us what we could never accomplish or achieve through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God unites us to Himself by the resurrection power of the Holy Spirit. 

God saves, and God alone. THAT is Good News!

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