Day 1: The Key to Salvation
The typical idea of salvation in our society today, as it has been for decades, is that a person needs to please God through good works to gain entrance into heaven.
Going to church, being baptized, serving the community, giving to the poor—these are the types of acts an average person thinks he or she must do to live a “good” life.
In reality, this mindset is not so different from that of other world religions. In fact, all religions, with the one exception of Christianity, have a variation on this theme of doing good works to curry favor with a god or gods. In the East, for example, you must practice yoga or meditation to reduce your karmic debt.
Christianity takes a different stance on morality. Christianity argues that putting on Christ is key.
Putting on Christ
Paul references “putting on Christ” or being “clothed with Christ” in several of his letters in the New Testament (see Romans 13:14; Galatians 3:27). And the great English theologian and author C. S. Lewis, in his classic Mere Christianity, called this concept of putting on Christ “the whole of Christianity.”
Sounds rather important, right?
Putting on Christ may sound mysterious, like an activity reserved for the super-spiritual. But from Paul’s writings, it’s clear that this is something God calls every Christian to do. Indeed, if we don’t do it, it’s impossible to live the Christian life!
Most of us take our ordinary self, with its various desires and interests, as the starting point of morality. Even in a morally degenerate culture, society makes certain demands of us. We have an idea that there are some things we ought to do because they are right (for example, feed the poor), while there are other things that we ought not to do because they are wrong (such as lie, cheat, and steal).
As we adhere to these demands, we are engaging in some form of moralism. We’re seeking to “clean up our act.” But the whole point of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that we cannot clean up our act on our own. If we could, there would have been no need for Christ to come; His sacrifice would have been unnecessary.
In short, many of us seek to change our external actions, but we do not want to—or understand the need to—be changed on the inside, to the core of our very selves. We think we’re “not so bad” on the whole and just need a little “touching up.”
This mindset does not work out in the long term.
The more we pay attention to morality and its demands, the more our conscience will be amplified. We will become increasingly aware that we are not good. This, in turn, leads us to become frustrated or angry with ourselves because we are unable to adhere to the moral standards we have.
We’ll continue to explore this idea later.
Day 1 Scripture Readings:
Romans 13:14
Galatians 3:27