A Final Word About Authentic Christian Faith

I urge you, I beg you, if you have never repented of sin and put your trust in Jesus Christ alone for salvation, do it now!

The bottom line of this great epistle of Christian freedom is not that you earn God's salvation by being religious, going to church, showing all the externals of obedience to the law of God but by that change of heart which comes through authentic repentance in which you put your trust in Jesus Christ alone for salvation. You cannot earn it. It was earned for you on the Cross by God's atoning work through Jesus Christ.

Francis Asbury, was the father of American Methodism. At the end of his notable and fruitful life, he had this to say:

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Were I disposed to boast, my boasting would be found true. I was converted at the age of sixteen. At the age of eighteen I began to preach, and traveled some in Europe. At twenty-six I left my native land, bade adieu to my weeping parents, and crossed a boisterous ocean to spend the rest of my days in a strange land, partly settled by savages. In thirty years I have crossed the Allegheny Mountains fifty-eight times. I have slept in the woods and been without food and covering. Through the Southern states I have waded swamps and led my horse for miles, and in these journeys took cold that brought on the diseases that now prey on my body and must soon terminate in death. But my mind is still the same, that through the merits of Christ and by the grace of God I am saved.

You see, Asbury understood his works did not save him. At the same time, he understood that because of the salvation he had in Jesus Christ, he became a new creature and was propelled forward in service to Jesus Christ.

Let me conclude with a brief vignette told by William Willimon, the dean of the chapel at Duke University.

One day he received a phone call from a very irate father. The father exploded on the other end of the line, telling Willimon furiously, "I hold you personally responsible for this!" He was angry because his graduate-school-bound daughter had decided to (in his words) "throw it all away and go and do mission work in Haiti with the Presbyterian Church."

The father screamed, "Isn't that absurd! She has a B.S. degree from Duke and she is going to dig ditches in Haiti! I hold you responsible for this!"

Willimon said, "Why me?" The father said, "You ingratiated yourself and filled her with all this religion stuff."

Will Willimon is not easily intimidated. He asked the father, "Sir, weren't you the one who had her baptized?"

"Well, well, well, yes."

"And didn't you take her to Sunday School when she was a little girl?"

"Well, well, yes."

"And didn't you allow your daughter to go on those youth group ski trips to Colorado when she was in high school?"

"Yes . . . but what does that have to do with anything?"

"Sir, you are the reason she is throwing it all away. You introduced her to Jesus. Not me!"

"But," said the father, "all we wanted was a Presbyterian."

Willimon, who has an instinct for the jugular, replied, "Well, sorry, sir, you messed up. You've gone and made a disciple!"

God's in the business of bringing about new creation.

Are you willing to release the people nearest to you to allow them to grow into the people God is calling them to be, even if it turns your familiar world upside down?

And, maybe, more targeted, the question should be: Are you willing to meet the crucified and risen Christ in a way in which all the religiosity is stripped off and you put your personal trust in Him alone for salvation and allow him to shape you into a new creation and do in you and through you that which He dreams of doing?