The most important question in the world

What is the most important question in the world? Whom should I marry? What career should I pursue? What is the purpose of life? Is there a God? Why evil? Will Jesus come before A.D. 2000? How do I find happiness? How can I live the most productive life? The list is endless. I suggest that the most important question is "What must I do to be saved?" (Acts 16:30).* Once this question is answered all other questions find their proper perspective.

The Bible gives, seemingly, two very different answers. A rich young man asked Jesus, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" (Mark 10:17). Jesus directed him to keep the commandments. Years later a Roman jailer asked Paul and Silas, "What must I do to be saved?" (Acts 16:30). They answered, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved you and your household" (verse 31).

Are these two answers contradictory? How could the Bible give two different answers to the same question? Is it true that one has to keep the commandments to get to heaven? Is commandment-keeping or belief, or both, the basis of salvation? Is obedience related to faith?

The answer becomes clear when we look at another incident. In John 6 the Jews asked Jesus a question: "What must we do to do the works God requires?" (verse 28). What does obedience to God involve? Jesus answered them: "The work of God is this: to believe in the one He has sent" (verse 29). Jesus thus relates obedience and faith. Seen in that light, there is no contradiction between obedience to God and believing the One He has sent.

Meaning of faith

Flesh and blood analogy. This be comes even clearer in an analogy Jesus used in verses 53 and 54 to explain what it means to believe in Him. He compared salvation to His body and His blood: "I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day" (verses 53, 54).

When you eat a piece of bread, how much do you place in your mouth? All of it. When you chew it, how much do you swallow? All of it. When you take a drink of water, how much do you swallow? All of it.

Jesus used this analogy of eating and drinking to illustrate what faith is. Faith is taking hold of God 100 percent. Faith is trusting God 100 percent. Faith is depending on God 100 percent. Faith is swallowing all the food in your mouth. Faith is swallowing all the liquid in your mouth. Faith in Jesus must be 100 per cent or nothing. Ninety-nine percent won't do.

Difference between faith and belief. There is a crucial difference between saving faith and belief as we use the words today. Belief is an intellectual assent that something is true. "Even the demons believe" (James 2:19). Faith is intellectual assent that something is true, plus the willingness to give oneself to the practice of that truth. The demons are unwilling to do this.

I travel on airplanes frequently. I believe that airplanes take off every day from Washington, D.C., to London. But as long as I do nothing about it, the fact, that airplanes fly from Washington, D.C., to London every day remains just a belief. Faith says, "Get on that plane." Belief says, "I know the pilot is reliable and the plane is safe." Faith says, "Trust that pilot and plane, and board it." Holding on to just belief will do me no good. Belief says, "Keep one foot on the run way just in case the plane is not safe." Faith says, "Put both feet in the plane." That plane cannot take me to London until I am willing to commit myself 100 percent to that plane. If only 1 percent of me is outside that plane, it cannot take off.

Once I am in the plane I must be obedient to the flight attendants and to the pilot. When the sign says "Fasten seat belt," I do. When the sign says "No smoking," I refrain from smoking (of course, I refrain from smoking all the time). During the flight I can move about the plane. If the ride gets choppy, the pilot instructs everyone to return to their seats and put on their seat belts again. Everyone obeys.

Let's say that I become bored with the flight. I get up and knock on the pilot's door and offer to fly the plane. It looks simple. If I insist, there will prob ably be officers in uniform waiting for me when we land. While on that plane I must trust and depend on that pilot and that plane. There is absolutely nothing I can do to help get to my destination. All I can do is board that plane (my part) and let the pilot get me to my destination.

Meaning of having faith in Jesus. This is what Jesus was trying to explain to the Jews about what it means to have faith in Him. We want to help pilot that plane; we want to make our contribution. Jesus says, "No. Trust in Me. There is nothing you can do." But what about the rich young man? Didn't Jesus tell him to keep the commandments if he wanted to get to heaven? Yes, He did. Even though the rich young man said he had kept all the commandments, he suspected that that was not enough. Hard as he had tried, he had not kept them well enough. He was right. He had not even begun to understand what it means to keep the commandments.

Jesus takes people where they are and then leads them to where the real issues lie. The issue was not commandment keeping, but something much deeper, something foundational. Jesus then told the young man that he needed to sell everything that he had, give to the poor, and then come and follow Him. This is where it becomes obvious that commandment keeping is not the basis of salvation; if it was, then selling every thing and giving to the poor would also be a requirement for heaven.

What did Jesus mean? We need to consider the context. Just prior to this encounter Jesus had blessed the children. "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it" (Mark 10:14, 15).

A childlike trust. I believe that the rich young man was standing in the crowd observing Jesus interacting with the children. He must have been puzzled by the statement that no one will enter heaven unless they become like little children. Just as Nicodemus was puzzled about the new birth and wondered how a grown person could reenter the womb (John 3:4), so the rich young man wondered how a grown person could become a little child. Suddenly his carefully calculated system of salvation began to crumble. Maybe his commandment-keeping was not enough. Maybe he was not going to heaven after all. Obviously a baby could not keep the commandments, so what were the requirements for heaven?

The essence of salvation. What is the essential characteristic of a little child? What is different about a small child compared with an adult? Innocence? Trust? Adults may possess these too. The unique characteristic of a little child is dependence. Likewise, the essence of salvation is dependence.

Place a grown man in a wilderness or jungle by himself with a backpack and supplies, and he can live for a long time. Place a little child in the same situation, and the child will not survive long. A little child is totally dependent on adults for existence. That is why Jesus told the rich young man to sell everything and give to the poor. He would then have nothing left. Now he would have to depend on Jesus for everything. If he needed a new roof for his house, he would have to ask Jesus. If he needed a new camel, he would have to ask Jesus. If he wanted to book a trip to Egypt, he would have to ask Jesus. But he was not willing to be totally dependent; that was too much to ask. He turned away in sorrow. Commandment keeping (on the outside) is easier than giving oneself unreservedly to Jesus.

Jesus asked the same from the rich young man that He asked from the Jews in John 6 total dependence. The essence of salvation is dependence on someone else for what you cannot do yourself. The Bible calls this grace what someone else has done. "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God not by works, so that no one can boast" (Eph. 2:8, 9). Grace is unmerited favor. Grace is receiving what you do not deserve. Grace is what God gives to you.

Confusion about the requirements for salvation is common in any denomination with strict rules for admittance, and the Seventh-day Adventist Church is no exception. For example, if it is important that you keep the seventh-day Sabbath (one of the Ten Commandments), then it is easy to slip into the thinking that if you do not keep the seventh day as the Sabbath, you will be lost. If you can be lost by not keeping the seventh day, then logic dictates that the opposite must be true: keeping the seventh day is part of the process of how you are saved. However, the text we have just quoted makes it clear that salvation is totally from God, totally a gift. My performance has nothing to do with the ground of my acceptance with God. I am accepted by God totally be cause of the perfection of another Person, the obedience of another Person.

As Paul says, "Just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous" (Rom. 5:18, 19).

Elements of salvation

This passage introduces the term justification, a favorite word for Paul. We are told that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus" (Rom. 3:23,24). We are "justified freely by his grace." In the next chapter Paul makes an astonishing statement: "Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation. However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness" (Rom. 4:4,5). Here we have God justifying the wicked. Just what does justify mean?

The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Dictionary defines justification as follows: "The divine act by which God declares a penitent sinner righteous, or regards him as righteous. Justification is the opposite of condemnation (Rom. 5:16). Neither term specifies character, but only standing before God. Justification is not a transformation of inherent character; it does not impart righteousness any more than condemnation imparts sinfulness. . . . When God imputes righteousness to a repentant sinner He figuratively places the atonement provided by Christ and the righteousness of Christ to his credit on the books of heaven, and the sinner stands before God as if he had never sinned" (p. 635).

When God justifies you, He declares you righteous because Christ is righteous, not because of any intrinsic goodness you may have. That is why Paul can say that God in a sense justifies the wicked. When we accept Jesus we do not become immediately perfect. We still fall. I will say more on that later.

Justification does not make you intrinsically righteous (see Rom. 4:5). We need to make a careful distinction between a person's state and a person's standing with God. A person's state is how good he or she is. A person's standing is how God regards him or her. God regards people as either saved or lost; there is no neutral ground. A person is never in the process of being saved. You are saved or you are not.

Sinners enjoy the assurance of salvation, not because their standing rests in what they have done or in what has been done to them. Their assurance rests in what Christ has done for them (verses 9, 10). He accomplished our victory at Calvary once and for all, and now offers that victory to all who believe. You are saved, not because you are righteous or even because you are converted (although there will be no unconverted people in heaven), but because through faith you place your trust, your dependence, in Jesus Christ. God accepts that faith, imputes the righteousness of Christ to you, credits you with the perfect life of Christ, and treats you as if you had never sinned: "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Cor. 5:21).

The cross the beacon. The basis and assurance of salvation stand rooted in the cross of Christ. It is the great beacon shining across time. In the Old Testament people looked toward the cross. The whole object of the sanctuary service was to point people toward the Lamb of God. Since New Testament times we look back to the cross. "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God" (1 Cor. 1:18). "For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Cor. 2:2). "May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Gal. 6:14). "And through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross" (Col. 1:20). "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God" (Heb. 12:2). "For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your fore fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect" (1 Peter 1:18,19). "Grace and peace to you from... Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood" (Rev.1:5). "These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb" (Rev. 7:14).

At the moment you place your faith in Jesus, God transforms you through the new birth experience (part of sanctification) so that you possess the will to live a holy life. The growth in Christ that begins here is the work of a lifetime, never fully realized in this life. But throughout the process, always because of the doing and dying of Christ, God treats the believer as perfect and worthy of salvation. Jesus said, "If you love me, you will obey what I command" (John 14:15; see also John 15:10). But the believer keeps God's rules only as a response to having already been justified in Christ, never as the cause or part of the cause of that justification.

Sanctification. Sanctification is the process of becoming holy. God says we are also holy in Christ when we believe (justification). Sanctification is becoming what God says we already are in Christ. In Scripture Sanctification is both a past and a future reality. Paul addresses the Corinthians who were anything but holy as "sanctified (hagiazo) in Christ Jesus" (1 Cor. 1:2) and yet "called to be holy" (hagioi). Sanctification in the Bible is described as pursuing righteousness" (1 Tim. 6:11), living a "new life" (Rom. 6:4), being "transformed" (Rom. 12:2), "perfecting holiness" (2 Cor. 7:1), growing "up into... Christ" (Eph. 4:15), pressing on "toward the goal" (Phil. 3:14), being "built up" in Christ (Col. 2:7), becoming "firm in all the will of God" (Col. 4:12), fighting "the good fight of the faith" (1 Tim. 6:12), partaking of "the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4).

At this point we need to define what we mean by sin. Salvation is rescuing people from sin. Do we cease to sin once we have been justified? What happens when we sin after justification? Do we lose our salvation? Every time you utter a critical word, gossip about someone, entertain jealousy, covet someone's possession, participate in discord, get angry or lust after someone, have you lost your salvation and have to be reconverted? If you were to die during this period, would you still go to heaven?

Sin operates on two levels: behavior and relationship. We know that sin is the breaking of the law (1 John 3:4). But sin is also breaking the law of love. When Jesus was asked which was the greatest commandment, He referred His questioners to a higher law, the law of love love to God and love to each other (Matt. 22:37-40). Sin can be classified as SIN in capital letters and sin in small letters. God is first concerned with SIN, which is the ruptured relationship you and I have with God from birth (Ps.51:5). Paul tells us that "everything that does not come from faith is sin" (Rom. 14:23). Faith is a trusting, dependent relationship with God. It is saying yes to God. It is placing everything in one's life at God's feet. It is the willingness to do everything that God asks. Faith is total dependence on God.

The sin of Adam and Eve was not the taking and eating of the forbidden fruit. They had sinned before they took the fruit. They sinned when they decided that they would trust the words of the serpent more than God, when they fol lowed their will rather than God's will. They broke their dependent relationship with God. This was when SIN took place. When SIN happens, it leads to sin, the act of taking the fruit. When we focus on sins we develop a list mentality, the mentality of the Pharisees, of the rich young man. We can avoid every wrong behavior and never make it to heaven. The Pharisee who boasted about how good he was was probably right. He had not committed adultery, he did pay his tithe faithfully, he did provide for his family. He did not commit sins. But he did not possess faith: a trusting, dependent relationship with God. He was still a SINNER (Luke 18:9-14).

Justification takes care of SIN, the relationship problem. Sanctification takes care of the sin, the behavior problem. Justification is the work of a moment, birth. Sanctification is the work of a lifetime, growing up into full maturity. Christians who are justified and sanctified are eager to overcome sin. But it also means that just like a child stumbles and falls on its way to adult hood, so the Christian will fall and stumble on his or her way to full perfection in Christ. But just as the child is still a daughter or son, so the Christian is still a child of God even when he or she stumbles, sins. God views these sins as part of the maturing process, and the person does not come under condemnation. They are falling, not because they have a broken relationship with God, not because they refuse to be dependent, but because they are immature, ignorant, wrestling with addictions, wanting desperately to grow up into Him. When you fall and recognize it, you immediately ask for forgiveness. You may fail at times, but you are always repentant.

When God looked at the life of Dav id through the eyes of Jesus, He saw only a perfect person. David committed some awful sins. He was an adulterer and a murderer. Yet God records this of him: "I tore the kingdom away from the house of David and gave it to you, but you have not been like my servant Dav id, who kept my commands and followed me with all his heart, doing only what was right in my eyes" (1 Kings 14:8). I would find little difficulty with this text except for the word "only." Did David do only what was right in God's eyes? No, he did not. Then how could the text say what it says? It makes sense only if you distinguish between SIN (relation ship) and sin (behavior). David committed many sins. His behavior was despicable. But he lived a repentant life. He wanted to be always dependent on God. He coveted God's righteousness.

If David had been lost, it would not have been because of his adultery or committing of murder. He would be lost because he did not keep a faith-trust-dependent relationship with God, because he had first committed SIN. The problem with making lists of sins is that we then rank them. This one is a terrible sin; this one is not so bad; this one will definitely keep me out of heaven; this one should not stop me from getting in; and so on. The sin of adultery and the sin of covetousness are both part of the Ten Commandments, yet we rank one much lower than the other as far as eternity is concerned. Cheating in business is no different than murdering someone; both are sins.

Glorification

Salvation has a third element glorification. Our salvation will not be complete until the "perishable" is "clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality" (1 Cor. 15:53). Our goal is to live forever with Jesus.

Perhaps an illustration will help clarify what I have been saying. A bicycle is made up of two wheels, front and back. A bicycle has value only when it is moving toward a destination. When I was in school I used to participate in slow bicycle races. The object was to be the last to reach the finish line. If a foot touched the ground, you were automatically disqualified. The problem was that the bicycle was not made for standing still. So also the Christian is not made for standing still. He or she is moving toward living with Jesus for all eternity.

Justification and sanctification, like the two wheels on the bicycle, must be distinguished but never separated. Eliminate either wheel, and you no longer have a bicycle. But you need to know the function of each wheel. Eliminate either justification or sanctification, and you no longer have salvation. But you need to know the function of each. Justification is what Jesus did for me 2,000 years ago. It is complete, perfect, and imputed to me when I place my faith in Him. Sanctification is what Jesus does in me day by day, starting with the new birth experience. It is incomplete and is imparted to me as I grow in Him.

Glorification is where I want this bicycle to take me. Like the rich young ruler, like the unbelieving Jews, the only way to salvation is to depend on the life of a substitute, to depend on the merits of another. Jesus, who met all the demands of the law, who gave His life on Calvary's cross, offers to each one His righteousness. The basis of my salvation will always be dependent on the life and death of Jesus (Rom. 3:25; 5:19). This dependence then results in a life seeking to live according to every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God; a life that will bring honor to God; a life that others "may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us" (1 Peter 2:12).

What then is the most important question in the world? How are you saved? And the answer is by living a life of total dependence on Jesus Christ.