At the end of the day, are you a check the box type person?

Reading through Psalm 15, David makes it clear that only those people that live their life totally surrendered to the Lord will enter God’s Holy Tent and live on His holy mountain. I like the way the New Century Version translates this very small but powerful Psalm.

“Lord, who may enter your Holy Tent? Who may live on your holy mountain? Only those who are innocent and who do what is right. Such people speak the truth from their hearts (emphasis mine) and do not tell lies about others. They do no wrong to their neighbors and do not gossip. They do not respect hateful people but honor those who honor the Lord. They keep their promises to their neighbors, even when it hurts. They do not charge interest on money they lend and do not take money to hurt innocent people. Whoever does all these things will never be destroyed (emphasis mine).” Psalm 15:1 – 5 (NCV)

When I think about entering into the Lord’s Holy Tent or living on His holy mountain, I think about the eternity I am going to spend praise dancing with Jesus! [I can't t help but to throw that imagery out there.] We were made to worship the King and we will all be dancing around the throne in Heaven singing praises to the King of Glory. I can’t even begin to imagine what that is going to be like. I mean, I have heard songs about heaven…“Surrounded by your glory what will my heart feel? Will I dance for you Jesus or in awe of you be still?” Now I know how Bart Millard (of the band MercyMe) must have come up with the lyrics…but the fact remains it is simply hard to imagine anything like it!

Ok let me come back down to earth for a minute. I want to focus on one other aspect of Psalm 15. In the above passage I emphasized the words from their hearts. Committing your life to Christ is just that…a commitment! It is not a " check the box" thing or a "follow the law" thing. It is a living, breathing, life altering, hearting changing thing. There will be no way to spend eternity with Christ if we just try to follow a bunch of laws and check a box at the end of the day saying we managed to “color within the lines.”

Everyone is separated from God because of their sin and their sinful behavior. The apostle Paul tells us in Romans (3:23) that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Paul continues in Romans (6:23) to tell us that the wages of sin is death. But the gift of life is through the price God’s one and only son paid on Calvary for your sin and for my sin. 

Yes! 

Jesus loves us so much, 

HE paid the price so none of us have to die. 

Isn’t that wonderful news?!? This is the gift of grace. We did nothing to earn it. It’s a free gift. All we have to do is accept it. I love the way the Message sums up the gift of grace in Ephesians 2:7-10

“Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It's God's gift from start to finish! We don't play the major role. If we did, we'd probably go around bragging that we'd done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he as gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.”

Do you know how to get to heaven?

One of the most quoted verses in scripture is found in John 3, verse 16. “For God so loved the world He GAVE (emphasis mine) his one and only son so that WHOEVER (emphasis mine) believes in him may not be lost, but have eternal life.” (MSG)

I love this verse. It speaks to me of God’s love not just for me, but for WHOEVER (that means ANYONE, even the UNLOVEABLE) believes in Christ. The word “whoever” gives me a glimpse into the grace of God. Now, if we go back and look at the context of this verse we see that it is taken from a conversation Jesus is having with Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a member of the Sanhedrin, the highest governing body of the Jewish people. In this conversation Nicodemus is asking Jesus “how a person can be reborn?” (Basically, have eternal life.) Because Nicodemus was a member of the Sanhedrin, he believed that a person worked out his salvation by himself (herself). Acting right; speaking right; hanging out with the right people, etc.

Jesus tells Nicodemus that one must be born from water and the Spirit. Our spiritual life comes from the Spirit. It is nothing we can do on our own. It is a gift. Going back to verse 16, God gave us “eternal life” in the form of His one and only son Jesus Christ. He loved us so much he GAVE Jesus so we could be free; full of truth and grace.

Nothing we can do by our own human hands will ever get us into heaven. We can’t do enough, serve enough. There is absolutely no way we can work out our own Salvation. We must only believe in the One God sent. No check the box rules; no secret codes or handshakes; no rituals - NOTHING. We just have to put our faith in Christ and believe.