Home  Articles  Site map

"If you love Me, you will keep My commandments" (Jn.14:15). There are many other things we do for Jesus when we love Him, but this is what He expects from us. Now we can see that if this is not happening in our life even though we say we love Jesus, things are not right in His sight.

The way many people present the Gospel these days, it looks as if when we 'accept' in our mind Jesus as our Saviour, He will start blessing us in every way. His love will flow into our life, mercy and grace will abound, and everything negative will be taken away. It is no wonder that this appears like a real good news to many people.

But the true good news is that Jesus has come to set us free from our sins (Mt.1:21). What does this mean in practice? We who have been born in sin, i.e., with a sinful nature right from birth, have all done many sins in our thoughts, motives, intentions, words and actions. The problem is not just that this makes us guilty and subject to the judgment of God, but that we keep doing the same sins again and again. It should be obvious to us that saving us from sin must include not only forgiving us and saving us from our guilt, but also delivering us from the power of sin in our life so that we can stop sinning. It is when we realise how guilty we are and how sinful our nature is that we look for a Saviour. When we understand that Jesus has taken our punishment on Him so that He can now forgive us, we feel sorrowful about our sins and we want to stop sinning and start following Jesus by doing all that He says (2Co.5:15). It is to such people that God gives forgiveness, and not for others who think they have found a way of avoiding punishment for their sins (Ps.130:4).

Isn't this such a crucial point in the process of salvation? Isn't wanting to give up sinning and to do whatever the Lord Jesus wants a mark of our love for Him? But people confuse it for works. 'Works' are things people do hoping to earn merit with God. But repentance is just the fruit of our love for our Lord who has given Himself for us. Others insist that salvation is only by faith, which they think means only to believe certain things about Jesus. But that can be just an intellectual belief, whereas true faith is our trust in Jesus as the One who died in our place to take away the punishment that we deserve. When we trust Him like this, won't we want to lay down our life for Him, in denying ourselves and doing His will (Ro.6:12,13)? If someone's so-called faith does not result in this turning away from sin towards doing His will – it doesn't produce this work, it is just an imaginary or dead faith (Ja.2:20-22).

The spirit of this world has confused many people, distorting the meaning of salvation words such as repentance and faith, and substituting them with positive thinking, avoiding the negative, refusing questions, etc. We must fight our way through this deception to the truth, if we are to find the way that leads to life (Mt.7:13,14).

Tweet