Is There an Easy Way?

Understanding God’s plan for your salvation is too important to trust to trial and error or seemingly easy answers. The Bible’s answer is simple, though not easy.

Life can be so confusing. It seems that everywhere we turn there are conflicting promises and sales pitches. They all promise to be the best and the easiest. There are antiaging products, get-rich-quick ideas, the “best fishing lure in the world” and a host of other items that promise anything and everything.

How can we know what to believe? A healthy dose of skepticism is usually necessary. But after you have weeded out the most obvious hoaxes and too-good-to-be-true claims, what can you do? Sometimes trial and error seems the only way.

But that’s not the solution for the most important spiritual matters. You don’t want to risk your salvation to trial and error. Now is the time to invest in additional research. What does the Bible really say?

Two ditches

One relevant scripture is Roman 6:23: “For the wages of sin is death.” If you just take that by itself, it seems so negative. It seems that from the very first step in life, failure is inevitable. Just like everything else that affects us, some people focus on this and take it so hard that they swing themselves into a proverbial ditch: a very negative ditch where “woe is me” and “God doesn’t care about me.”

On the other hand, others focus almost exclusively on a very familiar scripture, John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Whew! So everything is okay, right? That was easy. I don’t have to worry about anything. It’s all going to be fine because God took care of it.

Focusing on that line of thinking can lead us to another proverbial ditch where “I am under God’s grace. Regardless of what I do wrong, my salvation is secure. God has already dealt with my sins so I don’t have to.”

Unfortunately, real life and the message of the entire Bible are not that easy. In the next few verses, the Bible tells us that Jesus Christ came into the world to be a light and that those who continue to sin hate the light. They don’t want their sins to be exposed or to be punished.

Ouch. Sounds like the process of salvation isn’t quite so easy.

What do we need to do?

So what do we need to do? Matthew 4:4 says it pretty clearly: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”

Let’s dig a little deeper. In 2 Timothy 3:16 it says, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

Now we are getting somewhere! I understand correction and instruction, but what are the other things?

Reproof (or rebuke) gives proof of our wrongdoing—it enables us to see what needs to be changed and what is needed to fix the problem. Doctrine is correct teaching. So, Scripture (which comes from God) is given to us so that we may strive to be perfect like God and Jesus Christ through learning and living the way taught in the Bible.

By reading and studying the Scriptures, we can learn how to live the way that God would have us live. In our journey through the Scriptures we can pick up great examples of how to do so. God also gives us wonderful insights into what happens if we make bad choices and what to do if that should occur.

An easy way to salvation?

So is there an easy way to salvation? Yes and no.

Yes, because we have the Word of God to use in our everyday lives. It will help us to better understand things that happen and give us answers to the questions that we yearn to have answered. It shows us how to “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness” (Matthew 6:33).

No, because we should understand that the Bible teaches that salvation is a process. The process begins when we accept Jesus Christ as our Savior, repent of our sins and seek baptism. Repenting doesn’t just mean being sorry—it means turning from our old way of life and becoming committed to living God’s righteous way (Ephesians 4:22-24). If salvation were to come immediately at that time, we would not need to live any longer in this flesh. But God wants us to keep learning and growing and becoming more like Him. The Christian life is not easy; we must rely on God in faith to shape and form us spiritually as we perform our spiritual responsibilities.

I think Christ said it best in Matthew 5:6: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.”

For more about the wonderful plan God is working out, see our booklets The Mystery of the Kingdom and From Holidays to Holy Days: God’s Plan for You.

Mark Weiss is a member of the Church of God, a Worldwide Association, in East Texas.