"What can wash away my sin?"

The other day, I watched an episode of “According to Jim” that really grabbed my attention.  In this particular show, Jim, the main character, dies.  He goes to the outskirts of Heaven, but is not granted immediate entrance.  The whole episode is deciding in a courtroom scene whether or not Jim had lived a life that was good enough to merit access to Heaven.  By the way, Jim was ultimately resuscitated and continued his life on Earth.

While the episode was interesting, the Bible presents us with an entirely different way of entering Heaven’s gates: by faith and trust in Jesus Christ alone.  I could quote dozens of verses from the Bible, but I’ll limit it to just one.  Titus 3:4 says, “But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy” (NIV).  No one is ever going to earn their way into Heaven because he/she lived a morally upright, pure, and upstanding life on Earth.  Why?  Because every human being has the problem of sin.

Former NFL commentator John Madden used to say “winning is the best deodorant.”  What he meant was this: when the football team wins, their inherent problems are masked and ignored even though they still exist.  It struck me that far too many people attempt to earn Heaven by trying to deodorize their sin with good works, if you will.  But, as far as God is concerned, the stench of our sin cannot be cleansed by living a life of good works. 

John Stott in his classic book “Basic Christianity” writes, “No religious observances or good deeds of ours could ever earn our forgiveness…He [Christ] died to atone for our sins for the simple reason that we cannot atone for them ourselves.”  The old hymn has it right: "what can wash away my sin?  Nothing but the blood of Jesus."

This does not mean that works are not important.  If you’ve read this blog enough you know that I love superheroes like Batman and Superman.  One reason I do is because they embody lives of doing good works and this is admirable.  Good works are vitally important; we just can’t get skewed on the sequence.  Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works” (NKJV).  I think it was Adrian Rogers who said, “We are not saved by good works, but we are saved for good works.” 

I am aware – painfully aware – that I can delve only so far into this issue because it’s really not feasible for me to present you with more than a few paragraphs in this blog (this is already longer than most of my blogs).  However, in conclusion, I do strongly encourage you to carefully read this article from Got questions.org.

http://www.gotquestions.org/faith-work.html 

Kevin