Baggage

When we come to Christ, we get a lot of freedom. We are freed from the punishment of sin, eternal damnation. We are freed from the power of sin, have our hearts of stone replaced with hearts of flesh that desire to do what's right. When Christ comes back, we will be freed from the presence of sin when we dwell with God for the rest of eternity.

That sounds like a pretty good deal. So good in fact, that we don't quite believe it, especially since it's free.

Some folks in the Galatian church didn't buy into it. There were those who wanted to impose the old requirements on the new believers -- basically saying to become a Christian you had to first become a Jew and come under the law given through Moses. Paul clearly considered this a distorted, different, messages, and had this to say about it:

"but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed." (Gal 1:7-9)

In short, that pretty much means "if someone is going around saying you need anything other than the grace of God provided through the cross to be saved, that person can go to hell." Strong words. He said them twice. It's that important.

You can take the simple good news and distort it in two ways -- add to it or take away from it. When you add to it, you've got "the cross plus something" and when you take away from it you've got "the cross isn't needed". Both are a tragedy.

Let's talk about adding to it first. People who come to Christ from other religions and know the necessity of the cross sometimes find themselves struggling with this, because of the extra baggage they bring along with them, some of it attached to them since they were children. Think about what that means though -- it says that the death of GOD IN THE FLESH is NOT GOOD ENOUGH to pay the price for the sins of the world. I don't think so.

You don't need the cross plus the temple, the cross plus passover, the cross plus any other festival, the cross plus baptism, the cross plus confession to a priest and penance, the cross plus any other sacrament, the cross plus mass, the cross plus the rosary, the cross plus the laying on of hands, the cross plus Joseph Smith, the cross plus the Watchtower Society, the cross plus the five pillars, the cross plus ritual prayer 5 times a day, the cross plus a pilgrimage, the cross plus speaking in tongues, the cross plus shaking around on the floor, the cross plus anything. You just need the cross!

Before I move on -- I don't need a bunch of responses from people trapped in other religions telling me "we don't believe you need to be saved". I did my homework. I know some "official" doctrines don't say you need everything I listed. But guess what? Not everybody believes the same as you, and they put themselves in bondage. If you're in the "well that's not me" category, then I have a question for you -- what the heck are you doing tied to some system you don't really need anyway? Got the Jesus heart surgery and God's Spirit is now in you? Got God's Word? What more do you think you really need?

Now let's talk about subtracting from the good news. Where, like one of my friends has told me, "maybe there's another way." Sorry, Jesus said "I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me." And Paul writes "I do not nullify the grace of God -- for if righteousness could be gained through the law, then Christ died for nothing!" It's a terrible slap in the face to God to think there is another way -- if there was another way, GOD'S SON DID NOT NEED TO DIE ON THE CROSS. He solved the problem, he paid the price. Accept it.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Grace and peace to you friends.