Now if you are one
of His own already, one who has put his faith in Jesus Christ and been baptized
in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then the lights stay on for
you. Heaven remains wide open for you day and night — 24/7. The throne of God's
grace is open for you to boldly and confidently come to God for help in your
time of need which is, by the way, always.
You have Jesus Christ as your high priest. He is a man. He knows what it is to
be tempted. He was tempted in every way we are and yet without sin. So look
away from yourself — no matter how you feel, no matter how sinful you think you
are, no matter how low you have gone. Look up to Him. Don't look within. Look
without — outside yourself to Him.
Outside yourself to that cross which — praise God — always remains outside
ourselves as standing for the finished work of God for our salvation.
Are you dead? He who is the resurrection and
the life is here. Are you sick? The Healer is here. Are you in bondage? The
Liberator is here. Are you a sinner? The Savior is here. You have no need that
He cannot meet. Try him. Taste and see that the Lord is good!
So
when we consider a text like this one in 1 Peter 4:17-18, we must come to our Savior, our High Priest, fix our eyes on Him,
and ask Him to gently unlock those doors of understanding, especially those
places where we find ourselves shut out from grace and shut in with the fear of
condemnation. We know that perfect love casts out fear, as John says. At best, a
legalistic interpretation of Scriptures like this will leave the heart with an
apprehension that what God's Word says in other places about the certainty of
salvation in Jesus Christ needs to be tempered or toned down some. Dear people
of God, I urge you to understand that our precious Savior, Jesus Christ, wants
to wash our minds and hearts of all such distortions of His grace. He wants us
to have the full assurance of faith, the full assurance of the wonderful grace
He brings to His people.
Now let us
consider what a legalistic gospel framework does with a passage like 1 Peter
4:17-18. See if it was not something
like the following. We were taught that this judgment that begins first with the
household of faith is one which means that if
(and there is a strong emphasis on the "if") anyone is saved they are
"scarcely" or "barely" saved. They just barely
squeeze into Heaven. The issue of whether or not they will or can be saved is
not settled. It is up to them to settle it. God has done His part, they must do
theirs. God gave the plan, it's their job to follow it. Now it is on their
shoulders to do this, and those who know what I'm talking about know that this
works-emphasis becomes a heavy, unbearable yoke. If they work hard enough, do
enough right things, believe and practice enough right things, and constantly (even
studiously) ask for forgiveness for everything (great or small) they can
recognize as sin in their lives, then maybe
they just might squeeze through Heaven's Gates.
Understood this
way, 1 Peter 4:17-18 means (quite obviously) that if believers barely have a chance of being saved, what
chance to unbelievers have? Obviously, none. Why? Because unbelievers are not
even trying. Under a legalistic view of the gospel, if believers don't try hard
enough — work hard enough and do it right enough — they won't be saved. Of
course, what "hard enough" and "right enough" actually means
— how "hard" is "hard enough" or how "right" is
"right enough"? — those under bondage to the law don't really know. And,
it is quite possible that some Christians who may not even know they aren't
trying hard enough (or doing it right enough) are going to hell. When one lives
under the law (and after everything is said and done), this threat of going to
hell is always looming over the heart as a very real possibility.
Under this false
gospel, then, people wonder to themselves just how many are going to make it to
Heaven. They start looking at one another. They may say to themselves as they
look at others: "I don't know if I'm saved but I know you're not." Or they may have someone they admire (as a very
religious person who is religious in the right way) and think to themselves:
"I don't know if I'm going to make it, but I know my mom is. If anyone
gets in, she will." Or: "I don't know if I'm going to make it but if
anyone does, someone like Gandhi or Mother Theresa certainly will."
All such ways of
thinking are traceable to a lack of understanding of what the grace of God in
Christ means. When there is such a legalistic understanding of being saved,
again, unbelievers who obviously have done no works, believed no right
doctrine, are of course, not saved. Now Scripture does teach that unbelievers
are lost and bound for hell, but the reason they are so is not because they aren't
doing works they need to do to be saved. The reason they will not enter Heaven is
because they have no Savior. It is because they have no place in their hearts
for the Lamb of God. They choose themselves rather than Christ as their God and
Savior.
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