World history is filled with thousands of ideas for how to gain a blissful afterlife.
You and I are aware of a relative handful from among those ideas.
Perhaps you even subscribed to one or more of them at some point.
One thing in common among all but one of the salvation blueprints is that they all are lies.
Well-intentioned, perhaps, but still permeated with flaws and the inability to deliver the soul into God’s eternal, blessed presence.
Jesus said in John 14:6 that the only way to heaven is to accept Him as Savior.
There are no exceptions for those who have crossed into the age of accountability by means of knowing God’s will and choosing to disobey.
Why was Jesus so exclusivistic?
It’s because human regret cannot cleanse the soul as Jesus’ blood can and the human emotional heart cannot regenerate the soul as the Holy Spirit can and the human mind cannot sanctify and transform itself as the Holy Spirit can.
Jesus put it this way when talking to the prominent, good-hearted yet confused Pharisee named Nicodemus:
“Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life.” (John 3:6)
We are to be as nice to people as we can possibly be.
But that won’t give us spiritual life.
We are to learn as much about the Bible as we can possibly learn.
But that won’t save our souls.
And we are resist temptations with the determination of a mama bird building a nest for the eggs growing within her.
But even the best mama birds sometimes fail and we’ll eventually fall to temptation.
Listen, let’s resist the lie of Satan that we don’t need a vibrant, growing presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
Satan wants us to believe that can gain salvation and grow in faith and resist temptation and produce fruit and end up in heaven without the Holy Spirit in our lives.
Don’t believe that serpent. He’s just wanting us to battle him on our own.
Let’s ruin his day. Let’s invite the Holy Spirit to fill our thoughts so that our faith and fruitfulness is revived and thrives every day.
As always, I love you
Martin
