The Great One-Trick Pony

In nineteenth-century America, there were many small circuses that traveled around the country to bring some measure of entertainment to folks in small towns and communities all over America, and it was common for these troupes to have animal acts as part of the show. These productions were not always of the highest caliber, however, and by today's standards the entertainment might be considered a tad on the pedestrian side.

Stunts involving horses were common, often featuring someone skilled in trick riding. Another typical act featured a dog and a pony, with the pony trotting around in circles while the dog jumped on its back to ride it. Sometimes there were several dogs and ponies for a little extra razzle-dazzle. Oooh...

Thank goodness for cable TV.

This is where we get the expression "dog and pony show," a reference to a lamely contrived performance, presentation or demonstration of some type, often one characterized by gimmicks and intended for promotional purposes.

It's also where we get the term "one-trick pony," which refers to something that has only one specific application or someone who is known for doing only one thing well. It is typically used disparagingly, and emphasizes that someone is inflexible in their style or approach or unable to perform well outside certain limited parameters.

If we call someone a "one-trick pony," we are dismissing them as being only marginally skilled or competent due to their predictably one-dimensional approach to doing something, even though they may in fact be quite adept at their one and only "trick." Sometimes extraordinarily adept.

Case in point: Satan.

Satan: the Great One-Trick Pony. Unquestionably the greatest in the history of the world. Satan is so good at his one "trick" that he scarcely needs any others when it comes to keeping people on a treadmill that stunts their spiritual growth, robs them of their joy in the Lord, and in many cases dooms them to an eternity of separation from God.

"One-trick pony? Are you kidding?! Satan has all kinds of tricks he plays on us! He deceives and enslaves man in any number of different ways with all manner of evil, temptation, and deception."

True, in a broad sense. But when it comes to Satan's primary objective of blinding men to the truth of the gospel and steering them away from the cross, virtually every weapon in Satan's arsenal is a variation on the same old theme:

Works.

Things we do out of our own strength, ability, and motivation—not God's. Works take a number of forms and are done for a number of different reasons. For example, there are...

• Works to earn your salvation.
• Works to keep your salvation.
• Works to prove your salvation.
• Works to demonstrate that you don't need salvation.

And no doubt a few other variations. Of course, Satan's scheme of convincing men that they can please or draw closer to God through their own fleshly efforts is the oldest trick in the book, going all the way back to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden:

The first thing Adam and Eve tried to do was cover their nakedness, which in the Bible symbolizes a person's sinful condition. But notice they tried to do it with the work of their own hands, and God wanted them to understand that this was never going to cut it. God wanted to teach them that it would take the shedding of innocent blood to cover their sins, and so He promptly gave them an object lesson by shedding some innocent blood to cover their nakedness:

Of course, this prefigured what Christ would accomplish for us several thousand years later. We also see the futility of man's works in the very next chapter in an episode involving Cain and Abel, Adam and Eve's sons:

Abel was a shepherd, and Cain was a farmer. God had instructed them to offer animal sacrifices, but Cain decided he would bring a sacrifice consisting of some of his finest produce—the work of his own hands. God rejected Cain's offering and accepted Abel's, and in a jealous rage Cain committed the world's first homicide by murdering his brother.

It's crucial, however, to understand exactly why God rejected Cain's sacrifice. Yes, Cain was disobedient, but that's not the point—at least not entirely. The point is that God wanted to drill it into man's consciousness that only the shedding of innocent blood could atone for sin, which is an offense against His infinitely holy character. God allowed the blood of animals to cover their sins temporarily until He sent the Redeemer—His only begotten Son—to offer the ultimate sacrifice of His own blood to atone for the sin of mankind once and for all.

By the same token, God also wanted to drill it into man's consciousness that his own works in the flesh could never meet His infinitely holy standards—we need a Redeemer. In fact, the things we do in the flesh to try and make ourselves more pleasing or acceptable to God are detestable to Him:

In this article, I want to convey to you how pervasive the concept of works has become, both in non-Christian religions as well as large segments of Christianity through the influence of aberrant doctrinal teachings. Satan is largely succeeding in blinding the majority of people to the simple truth of the gospel by using his number one trick in a stunning variety of ways, and it is important for born-again believers to be keenly aware of this trick whenever, wherever, and however it surfaces.

Before we get started...

Before I go any further, there are a couple of things I feel compelled to spell out as clearly as I can, so bear with me for a moment.

There are many Christians who invariably scowl and wag their bony fingers at those whom they perceive to be disconnecting their salvation from their works or behavior. They turn up their noses and hiss accusations of "easy believism" and "greasy grace" and do their utmost to shame those whom they view as "spiritual slackers" into getting off their pasty-white duffs and toeing the line to earn (or keep or prove, etc.) their salvation by arduously maintaining an acceptable level of proper Christian behavior. (They, of course, being the only ones qualified to ascertain just where that bar is set).

This is legalism, and it is toxic to those who traffic in it. But let's pause for a moment to consider those "spiritual slackers" they get so snooty about.

When we are confronted with the message of the gospel, we may feel convicted by the Holy Spirit. That's His job (John 16:8). If we respond to that conviction, we feel an inner sense of how truly sinful we are in God's eyes and we fundamentally change our minds about the fact we are sinners separated from God. We humble ourselves before Him, and ask Him to forgive our sin, believing in faith that God will do so because Jesus' death and resurrection paid our sin's penalty.

At that moment of belief in faith, the Holy Spirit takes up residence in our spirit and we are sealed forever as a child of God (2 Cor. 1:22; Eph. 1:13). We are born again, or born of the Spirit, and have become a new creature in Christ; old things have passed away and all things have become new (2 Cor. 5:17). God no longer sees us as sinful because He has cast our sin as far as the east is from the west (Ps. 103:12) and He has imputed His Son's righteousness to us (Rom. 4:20–25). From that moment on, God sees us as being as righteous as His Son Jesus, and this change is eternal. Everything God does is eternal.

Note, however, that we are forgiven of sin, not free of sin. We still possess a sin nature. It didn't just disappear—we haven't suddenly achieved a state of sinless perfection (Rom. 7:14–25).

And we'll never achieve a state of sinless perfection in this life.

What has only begun is a lifelong process of sanctification, which is the Holy Spirit's task of slowly conforming us to the image of Christ by continuing to convict us of sin on an ongoing basis. That process will continue until the day we die (or are raptured, whichever comes first).

Some believers, however, respond better to the sanctification process than others. It's like anything else—there are eagles who soar, and turkeys who snore. Some believers allow the cares of this world to discourage them and the pleasures of this world to distract them.

Each person comes to the Lord with a great big bag full of trash, and no one's bag of trash is the same as anyone else's. Our bag of trash includes things that are harmful to our spiritual lives, along with things that are useless or perhaps just not profitable. For the rest of our lives, the Holy Spirit carefully sifts through us and refines us, and to the extent that we are obedient to the Word and submit to the Spirit's gentle prompting, to that extent we begin to exhibit the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, and self-control (Gal. 5:22–23).

Not only that, but our Heavenly Father disciplines us when we stubbornly persist in some type of sin or disobedience just like any loving earthly father disciplines his children for their own benefit when they misbehave. The simple fact that He disciplines us when we need it proves that He loves us and that we have been adopted into His spiritual family (Heb. 12:6–11). What father disciplines children who are not his own?

The Bible urges us to lay aside all the junk that slows us down in our walk with the Lord, and live our lives in a way that pleases and honors Him in gratitude for what we have been freely given. The apostle Paul makes the analogy of an athlete who trains hard to win a competition (1 Cor. 9:24–27). The Bible says we will earn rewards in heaven for striving to live in a manner pleasing to God; conversely, to the extent that we fail to do so, we interrupt our fellowship with our Heavenly Father and forfeit potential blessings in this life and rewards in the next. Thus, we could conceivably end up empty-handed when we get to heaven, even though our salvation is eternally secure the moment we believe in faith (1 Cor. 3:10–15).

Whew. I said all that to say this:

All of this applies to every single person who ever has or ever will respond to the gospel, repent of sin, and come to faith in Christ—including those who turn up their noses and hiss accusations of "easy believism" and "greasy grace" at all those "spiritual slackers" they feel so superior to.

'Nuff said.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled article.

The old standbys

Satan has traditionally used every non-Christian religion on earth as a vehicle to ply his trade and infect men with the virus of believing they can please God and earn their way to heaven through works. You name it—Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism...the list goes on and on. Every single one of them, in one way or another, teaches that man can and must do things in his own power to earn favor with God, merit a cushy afterlife, or advance spiritually in some manner through his own efforts.

This is nothing new. In fact, that's precisely why Satan created religion in the first place: to undermine God's plan of redemption by capitalizing on our inherent pride and self-sufficiency and blinding us to God's grace and mercy—and our desperate need for it.

• Judaism 

Even the Jews, who saw God perform one miracle after another on their behalf and who were entrusted with God's Word and the promises of His redemption of mankind, got derailed by Satan's primary trick. God gave them His Word, and what did they do? They turned God's promises into one of the most breathtakingly elaborate systems of legalism and salvation by works the world has ever seen.

Most Jews today are convinced that they are not sinful by nature—that is, that they are not born with a sin nature. They believe it's up to the individual to choose to do good to please God. If they choose to do good, they will earn God's favor and be considered righteous. They believe that "righteousness" means that you simply keep trying to be good. They think it means to just keep trying to obey the Torah. In other words, works. They are the masters of their own fate, as it were. Why? Because they believe that's what the Torah says, and they so completely misrepresent and misunderstand the gospel of Jesus Christ that it's almost as if something were blinding them...oh wait, something is blinding them:

(Incidentally, "until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in" is absolutely a reference to the Rapture.)

I confess this was a head-scratcher when I learned of this belief among many Jews today, because the Bible (including their Old Testament) could scarcely be any clearer on this point: We are sinners, and the only way we can be considered righteous is through faith in God. In the Old Testament, that meant having faith that God would send a Redeemer to take away our sin (in the future) and to demonstrate that faith by keeping the Law of Moses. In the New Testament and up to the present time, it means having faith in God by repenting of sin and believing in faith that the Redeemer took away our sin (in the past).

So, I wondered, where on earth do they get this "masters of their own fate" idea? Where in the Bible do they get the notion that they are "righteous" because God declares them so? One of the verses they quote finally clued me in to the source of the error:

Ah ha...so that's how they get there. Note two things:

• The tense is future, not present (which is how Jews often misquote it).
• Are the Jews glorifying God today? Mmm...not so you'd notice.

Jews quote verses from the Old Testament that are describing Israel during the Millennial Kingdom (which is still future), and misapply them to the Jewish people and the nation of Israel now. For example, in the above passage from Isaiah 60, the prophet is talking about the Millennial Kingdom, not the present age! And yeah, they shall be "all righteous."

But consider: How do Jews (or Gentiles for that matter) become "all righteous" and enter the Millennial Kingdom in the first place? By believing in faith in the Redeemer God sent two thousand years ago.

And that would be Yeshua, my Jewish friends. His name is Yeshua.

That's the minor detail that most Jews will continue to overlook until God once again shows Himself mighty on their behalf and opens their eyes.

• Islam 

Islam, based on the Qur'an, is a completely works-based religion, which should surprise no one since it is one of Satan's greatest masterpieces.

In Islam, Allah is not seen as extending grace to man, but rather as being so far above man that a personal relationship with him is as offensive as it is absurd. Man exists to slavishly worship Allah in the hopes he will smile on him and grant him favor, and the way Muslims do that is to follow the Five Pillars of Islam:

• Recite the Muslim creed, or the shahada, under oath: "There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger."

• Pray five times a day, facing Mecca.

• Give to the poor and needy (including 2.5 percent of one's income). This is referred to in English as "alms-giving."

• Fast daily during the month of Ramadan.

• Make at least one pilgrimage to Mecca during one's lifetime.

There's no Savior, no redemption, no reconciliation of sinful men to a holy God...nothing. And certainly no salvation outside the works listed above in the Five Pillars.

• Roman Catholicism 

The Great One-Trick Pony's stratagem of injecting works into man's relationship with God is nowhere more evident than it is in Roman Catholicism. No religion on earth takes the concept of works further and higher than the Roman Catholic Church, which may as well be called "Works 'R' Us."

It has been said that everything in the Old Testament was external and physical, but when Christ came in the New Testament, He made everything internal and spiritual. In that case, the Roman Catholic Church has completely reversed what Christ accomplished because they have essentially returned everything to being external and physical.

First of all, you must be a member of the Roman Catholic Church to be saved. Period. This fundamental error stems from the fact that when Catholics read the New Testament and see the word "church," they automatically assume it means the Roman Catholic Church.

It doesn't.

In the Bible, the Church is an invisible body of believers who have repented of sin and believed in faith that Jesus' death and resurrection paid the penalty for their sin and as a result are born of His Spirit. That's it. They come from all walks of life and from all cultural, ethnic, and religious backgrounds—including Roman Catholicism. That's what makes them part of the Church, not membership in a pious, works-based religious organization.

Sidetracked by sacraments: God manages to save people in spite of the Roman Catholic Church, not because of it.

You must be baptized. Newborn baby? Not a problem. God will remember even if you don't. As soon as you're baptized, you can relax because you're "saved" (until you grow up and commit an unspecified number of additional sins, that is, which is where other man-made rituals come into play).

Then there is Confirmation, to deepen and broaden the "gift of the Holy Spirit" you supposedly received at baptism.

Then there is Eucharist, which is a ritual involving bread and wine (similar to what most Protestants call "Communion"). But Catholics believe that when they consume the bread and wine, it is mysteriously transformed into the actual flesh and blood of Christ. This is known as transubstantiation, and it effectively repeats Jesus' one time sacrifice for sin an infinite number of times.

Just to be clear: When Jesus commanded His disciples at the Last Supper to carry on the tradition of Communion, He told them to do it simply to remember Him and what He did (Luke 22:19). He didn't say they would be re-doing His one-time sacrifice on the cross in some mystical way.

You must go to confession, and tell a priest (a sinner just like you) all the naughty things you've done in order for him to absolve you from your guilt. Confess your sins to your Heavenly Father? Nope, not good enough.

The bottom line is that Catholics don't stay saved. Repeated performance of some of the above rituals and others are required to maintain your salvation. Catholics don't get born again—they get born again and again and again...

In other words, the great majority never get truly born again at all.

The tragedy is that untold millions of sincere Catholic people—as a direct result of what they have been taught by the Mother of Harlots, have faithfully performed these and other meaningless, man-made, biblically spurious rituals without ever experiencing the genuine spiritual regeneration that comes from responding to the convicting power of the Holy Spirit.

They have never consciously come to grips with the fact that they are sinners separated from a holy God, and been crushed by the resulting godly sorrow that leads to repentance. They have never humbled themselves before God and asked Him to forgive their sin, and believed in faith that Jesus' death and resurrection paid the penalty for it once and for all. That's what it means to be born again or born of His Spirit, not mechanically performing an endless series of empty, man-made rituals.

The Roman Catholic Church stands alone as Satan's all-time greatest works-based coup de grâce, bar none, and as such it has damned more people to an eternity without God than any other entity I can name.

New kids on the block

• The Hebrew Roots movement 

At least partly in response to the precipitous descent of the American Church into an abyss of toothless, seeker-sensitive mush, the Hebrew Roots movement has gained a lot of traction within Christianity in the last couple of decades.

It typically involves a pronounced emphasis on the Hebraic perspective of Scripture and the customs and traditions of ancient Judea. Of course, if it stopped there, it would be a good thing.

Unfortunately, it usually doesn't stop there.

Step by step, believers often get sucked into a situation where keeping the Torah and celebrating the Jewish feasts is seen as a spiritual requirement, and failure to do so reflects the fact that you may not be saved!

The end result is that believers end up being inexorably dragged back under the law that Jesus fulfilled perfectly on their behalf two thousand years ago, and the grace that God showed us through His Son effectively becomes null and void. It takes a mountain of mangled and misapplied Scripture to get there, but they seem to manage.

This is nothing more than Satan's old earn/keep/prove your salvation by works routine, only in this case sporting a prayer shawl and a phylactery.

• The New Age 

I decided to give the New Age movement/religion an honorable mention here, because even in a supposedly non-religious context, the work of the Great One-Trick Pony is clearly evident.

Naturally, New Agers have no use for the Bible or the gospel, but that doesn't stop many of them from yammering on and on about attaining "Christ-consciousness" and other code words for an altered state of consciousness, the goal of which is to come to the profound, mystical conclusion that they have no need of being saved.

God is in all, all is God, yada yada yada, blah blah blah. The "works" needed here are such activities as transcendental meditation, yoga, raising your vibration levels to prepare to ascend to the fourth (or is it the fifth?) dimension, and so on. All these activities, of course, help you realize that your only "sin" is failing to realize that you are a god.

Oh, you didn't know you were really a god and had no need to be saved? Trust me...you have the Great One-Trick Pony's word on it.

• Calvinism 

There has been a resurgence of Calvinism in recent decades, and central to this doctrine is the idea of unconditional election: the belief that God sovereignly chose all those who would be saved (the elect) before the creation of the world and that His sovereign choice has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with our free-will choice to repent or believe or respond to God in any way (thanks to our "total depravity").

So, if you happen to be one of the elect, then I suppose congratulations are in order. If not, oh well. Better luck next time. (Oops, sorry...there isn't going to be a next time.)

The manner in which the concept of works worms its way into this malignant tumor of a doctrine, however, is a bit more subtle than most.

Here's the game plan. People who subscribe to Calvinism believe that they are saved simply because God chose to save them—not because of anything they did. (Of course, all Calvinists assume that God chose them.) Now, all non-Calvinists agree that God does all the actual work of saving us (at least those who have spent more than 30 minutes studying the Bible do). But Calvinism requires us to believe the following:

• That God does not save people just because they yielded to the convicting power of the Holy Spirit that tugged at their hearts.

• That God does not save people just because they responded to the resulting godly sorrow and repented of their sin that separated them from a holy God that loves them.

• That God does not save people just because they heard someone explain the gospel and believed in faith that Jesus died and was raised from the dead to take the punishment for their sin.

Oh no, none of that...that might be contaminated with the insidious, flesh-glorifying effects of man's free-will choice in some way, and we can't have that, no sir. It's all because God chose them, period. Nothing to do with them. So, logically He didn't choose most others. Oh, but God is still just...somehow.

Well, being one of the elect must be pretty darn special. Imagine that:

"God chose me! Did He choose you? No? Well, tsk tsk tsk. God is sovereign, you know."

But at some point a nagging little question may secretly arise in the heart of a Calvinist, and the inner whispers go something like this:

"Gosh, how can I be absolutely sure I really am one of the elect? How do I know for 100 percent certain that I'm not fooling myself with wishful thinking, or that I just had an emotional experience and was somehow deceived into thinking I'm one of the elect, but in reality (gasp) I'm not?"

Now, it is true that many born-again believers, especially while they are still relatively immature in their faith, go through times when they doubt their salvation. Luckily, there's an app for that:

It is the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit that testifies with our spirit, or convinces us in our spirit, that we are in fact God's children, adopted into His family through faith in Christ. Ultimately, above and beyond the clear promises that are recorded in God's Word, that's the only "proof" we need.

Of course, if we are truly born again and the Holy Spirit really is sealed within us, then yes, we should see some evidence of it. More and more, we should be submitting to the prompting of the Holy Spirit and allowing Him to change us by convicting us of sin and conforming us to the image of Christ—that's His job. But when we as believers stubbornly persist in worldly behavior and continue to quench the Spirit's efforts to do His job for any length of time, we begin to feel miserable until we submit to the Spirit's leading and let Him begin to make some changes in our lives.

Go ahead. Ask me how I know this.

But down in the deep, dark recesses of the hearts of many Calvinists, the Great One-Trick Pony sneaks in and their thinking can morph into something along the following lines:

"Hmm...you know, if I'm really one of the elect, then I should be living a super-duper, ultra-dedicated, hyper-overcoming Christian life, right? I should be a pillar in my church, and not show the slightest wisp of carnality or sinful behavior, ever. Because if I do, uh oh... Then I would be forced to entertain the unthinkable possibility that I just might not be one of the elect! Nooo!"

Through the doctrine of unconditional election, Satan has them convinced that their salvation is the spiritual equivalent of winning the lottery. Then he plants the idea that if their Christian works are not quite up to snuff, then just maybe there's a glitch somewhere that could invalidate their winning ticket!

Suddenly they have something to prove (more to themselves than to anyone else), and it's check and mate. Satan's works à go-go is in full swing.

• Anti-OSAS 

People who deny the doctrine of the eternal security of Church Age believers ("Once Saved, Always Saved" or OSAS) somehow manage to miss the thunderingly clear teaching throughout the New Testament that promises that once we repent of sin and believe in faith that Jesus' death and resurrection paid our sin debt, the Holy Spirit is sealed within us and will never leave us. Few things are taught in the New Testament with greater clarity than the eternal security of Church Age believers, yet there exist within the Church groups of embittered individuals who stridently, arrogantly deny it and twist and misapply tons of Scripture to do it.

I have written about the anti-OSAS crowd before, but the point is that this is yet another golden opportunity for Satan to break out the old salvation-by-works shtick and deceive sincere people into believing that their salvation is in constant jeopardy. They live with the anxiety-inducing, joy-robbing belief that they can sin their way out of God's grace; that they can stumble and fall out of His loving hands—both of which are impossible:

I have argued these doctrinal issues with such people before, and I always walk away feeling that they, of all people, are to be pitied. They are caught in a works-based limbo—seemingly never fully saved nor fully lost, with a gun held to their heads demanding adherence to a nebulously defined standard of holiness...a standard of holiness that only elite Christians (like them) can hope to meet.

Here, Satan is in rare form because this effectively destroys a believer's witness and usefulness for the work of God's kingdom because that individual becomes preoccupied with maintaining the requisite level of behavior needed to safeguard the status of their salvation.

Not only that, but Satan often gets an added bonus when many such people become filled with spiritual pride (Satan's pièce de résistance) because they believe their works actually do live up to that nebulously defined standard of holiness I mentioned, thus rendering them superior to other more "carnal" believers and "safe" from losing out on heaven.

• The pre-wrath/post-trib Rapture 

The post-trib Rapture theory puts the Rapture at the end of the Tribulation, and the pre-wrath Rapture theory puts it somewhere in the latter half of the Tribulation before God totally blows a gasket. So, both have the Church on earth during most if not all of Daniel's 70th Week.

Now, you might wonder how the idea of works would get tangled up with theories about the timing of the Rapture, which is considered by most Christians as a secondary doctrine since it's not a salvation issue.

Part of the problem is that doctrinal errors never exist in a vacuum. They've always got friends, and one such ne'er-do-well that is often spotted tagging along with these two doctrinal deformities is anti-OSAS.

Those who believe in a pre-wrath or a post-trib Rapture believe the Church will be suffering horrific persecution during the Tribulation. They read passages in Revelation 6 and 7 that are describing the arrival in heaven of martyred Tribulation saints who come to faith in Christ after the Rapture and during the Tribulation, and leap to the conclusion that there must be Church Age saints still on earth, being beheaded for their testimony.

They view those who believe in a pre-trib Rapture as escapist, OSAS wimps who will be woefully unprepared to face the horrors of the Tribulation, and fancy themselves as spiritual Rambos who are prepared to be martyred for their faith. Many are survivalist types or "preppers," and are busy storing food, guns, and other supplies in underground bunkers.

Satan has a field day with these people, because few things appeal to the flesh more than the idea of protecting and providing for your family through the darkest hours in human history, while standing tall against the Antichrist and enduring to the end.

I've dealt with some of the errors of the post-trib Rapture theory before, so I'm not going to get into that in this article. The point I want to make here, however, is simply that those who see the Church going through the Tribulation invariably see themselves as members of the spiritual Special Forces, who are destined to suffer great persecution for the cause of Christ to prove their "worthiness" to be saved and raptured at (or near) the end of the Tribulation.

It's the Great One-Trick Pony's same old trick, only this time decked out in combat fatigues.

No trick—just truth

Pointing out how man-made religions are broadly based on the concept of salvation by works is a bit like pointing out how desserts are fattening. Not a lot of mystery there, and the reason is simple:

The world's religions know absolutely nothing of the life-changing power of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And yes, that includes Roman Catholicism. As a matter of fact, the gospel is incomprehensible foolishness to the religions of the world because man-made religion is, well, made by men—unregenerate men, to be precise.

All that's pretty easy and obvious. What motivated me to write this article, however, is the way that Satan, the Great One-Trick Pony, is polluting so many areas of the Church with the self-righteous stench of works in ways that are increasingly slippery and subtle. Ways that may not be so obvious or easy to spot—and it is accelerating because it works like magic. It always has and it always will.

Man falls for it every time, because earning, keeping, and proving our salvation by our own works makes perfect sense to our fallen nature. It seems right and reasonable. It seems fair. The sin-cursed world we live in supports and reinforces this idea in every conceivable way. It permeates our way of thinking:

• There's no such thing as a free lunch.
• You get what you pay for.
• No pain, no gain.

But none of this applies to the gospel. Our works have nothing to do with what Jesus accomplished for us on the cross. That's the whole point.

• Free lunch? We'll be guests of honor at the marriage supper of the Lamb!
• Pay? Our eternity in heaven is free because our Heavenly Father picked up the tab: the life of His beloved Son.
• Pain? Gain? Our redemption was purchased with Jesus' pain, not ours...but is our gain for the asking.

Well, if we can't earn it with our good works, what do we have to do?

Believe that we are what God's Word says we are: sinners separated from a holy God who loved us enough to sacrifice the life of His Son to save us.

Believe that Jesus is who God's Word says He is: the Son of God, sent into the world to redeem all who would believe in Him in faith.

Believe that Jesus did what God's Word says He did: shed His blood to pay the penalty for our sin, and then rose from the grave in victory over death so that all who believe in Him would do the same.

Nothing we will ever do can add or detract from that. Jesus did it all.

Our only "work" is to change our minds about our sin and our need for a Savior, and believe in faith that Jesus is that Savior.

So don't let the Great One-Trick Pony deceive you into believing you've got to earn your salvation or make it more secure through your own efforts, or that you have to prove to other people (or yourself) that you're really saved by putting together a résumé bristling with exemplary Christian behavior.

Your salvation—your eternal life in heaven—is based on one thing and one thing alone: your belief in faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Anything and everything else you try to base it on will prove tragically inadequate.

And that's no trick—that's the truth.

Greg Lauer — APR '15

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