Locked Out

A few years back I found myself in a situation that maybe you have found yourself in at some time in your life. I can’t remember exactly how the circumstance came about, but I found myself locked out of my own house. My keys were inside the house. I was outside. All windows and doors to the structure were locked up tighter than Fort Knox. I tried every possible avenue of entry, short of doing structural damage, and I couldn’t find a way in. Other than giving me some home security assurance, I sat frustrated at my situation. I did have my cell phone on me, though, and was able to contact my wife, who was about 15 miles away. She agreed to come home immediately and let me in. I had no remedy for my situation, but Teri could provide one. None of the strangers I watched driving up and down my street could help me either, only she had access to the house.

The situation I found myself in that day is similar to the situation mankind has been in since Adam and Eve fell before Satan’s trap in the garden. By allowing sin into the world through their disobedience to God, the original couple brought on a situation of which we can provide no remedy. Thus, we read in Romans 6:23 "...the wages of sin is death..." I might have been able to break into my house or pay a locksmith to open my doors, but no amount money or good deeds can access heaven’s gates as Ephesians 2:8-9 makes clear by saying "by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works..." When Jesus said in John 14:6 that "No one comes to the Father except through me," He meant it quite literally.

I just read somewhere that 92% of Americans believe in God...92%. That’s a start, but I’ve also read that more than half of those people believe in some form of works based salvation, i.e., getting to heaven by being good. I believe it to be the biggest web of deceit Satan weaves today, that somehow you can earn your way to heaven. If that were so, Jesus’ death on the cross would be meaningless because we could circumvent it through our good deeds. The flipside of thinking that good people go to heaven is the thought that only people who end up in eternal damnation, i.e. hell, are those we consider "bad" people, the Hitlers and Timothy McVeighs of the world. Even Christians can fall into this way of thinking. We think that there’s no questioning the salvation of the Mother Teresa(s) of the world, as if the gates of heaven have never swung open wider. Mother Teresa entered heaven based solely on her calling on the name of the Lord, period. Christians are often accused of being intolerant of other beliefs, but pursuing salvation through any means but Calvary’s cross is as hopeless as I was sitting on my front porch, locked out of my own house.