To call on the Lord in sincere faith for salvation is the single most important thing anyone can ever do on earth, for, as Jesus asked, “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?” (Mark 8:36).
After we secure heaven as the destination of our souls, we should not only love God more than anyone or any thing, we should feel enough gratitude to try to become more and more obedient to what Christ commanded. The Lord laid out for us the way we should live; and though it has nothing to do with being saved, we should feel an obligation to serve God because of our love for Him and our gratitude for what He did for us by His sacrificial death on the cross of Calvary.
The Lord said a lot about how we are to live, but He summarized it all with the Great Commandments in Matthew 22: 37-40. Here He said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
We, as children of God, have a problem keeping these two commandments because we are not “good.” While on earth we must contend with three powerful enemies: Satan, the world, and our own flesh. Satan is always on the job opposing God and trying to disrupt any service we try to render to God. But let us remember that “He that is in you (the Holy Spirit) is greater than he that is in the world (Satan)” (1 John 4:4).
The world is another powerful enemy to our devotion and service to God. It is filled with distractions and ungodly influences. We are called to live in the world but remain unspotted from it. This is a tall order, especially today because we are weak-willed. And too often we are also hypocritical in saying we want to be holy while still sinning.
The third enemy we must contend with is our own flesh. Even the great Apostle Paul had to admit in Romans 7 that he was “carnal and sold under sin.” Obviously Paul could not have been a terrible person. He was simply admitting that he, like all Christians, backslides and does things occasionally that grieve God. The simple truth is that every person who has ever lived on earth, except for Jesus of Nazareth, has been a sinner. Everyone living today is a sinner. Only when one dies does he become sinless through God’s act of glorification.
So, let us continue to do our best to be good servants while realizing we must “judge not” because in judging others we judge ourselves (Matthew 7:1). Instead, let us always revel in God’s forgiveness, because of His promise in 1 John 1:9, where He declares, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
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Ralph Fudge is the pastor of Big Ochlocknee Baptist Church in Coolidge, Ga., and has a Master’s degree in theology from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.