The God of grace
By Dara Fillmore
I’ve been thinking about the difference between Jesus Christ’s way to Heaven and
the ways some people believe we can get to Heaven without Him.
With other religions and beliefs, you often serve a god who is waiting to catch
you doing wrong. You must try to stay on your god’s good side — and you never
know exactly where he draws the line. This god often has a list of do’s and
don’ts, and you may be able to earn extra points by depriving yourself of things
you enjoy or by helping others.
In other religions, where you spend eternity is most often based on your
achievements or lack thereof. It’s all about you, because everything that
matters is what you’ve done in your lifetime and what you decide is right for
you. You have to be good enough to cross the chasm that separates man from God.
The above options are not reassuring.
Would you like quiet assurance rather than fearful hope? Do you want to know
that you truly are forgiven and will be in Heaven when you die?
To know that no matter what happens in all of life, that you will be with the
one God who rules by grace for all of eternity is a hope that is absolute. You
can have that hope in Jesus Christ. He is perfect and was able to pay our debt
to God because God needed a perfect payment to reconcile us to Himself.
Before Jesus died on the cross, He said, “It is finished.” (John 19:30)
What was finished?
His part of the deal.
The only other part of the deal is this: You must accept that He finished paying
for your sins and that you’re debt-free. If there was something else that needed
doing, “... I would have told you. …,” Jesus says in John 14:2.
In John 14:6, Jesus says, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, no man comes to
the Father except through Me.” Why would Jesus have died if there were another
way for us to get to Heaven?
You must realize that Jesus is the only One who can make you right with God, and
you must acknowledge that He is enough. It is enough that He died for your sins,
that He paid the price you deserved to pay for all the bad things you’ve done
and are going to do. It was all up to Him and He did what needed to be done. No
other religion can give you that peace.
The true God of the Bible gives undeserved mercy freely to any person who
chooses to believe. No other god rules by grace.
