“For by grace are ye saved through faith… not of works, lest any man
should boast” (Eph. 2:8, 9)…
…but, we are saved for works.
Sometimes ago, a question was asked concerning Christians who maintain that as long as their heaven is sure, they care less if others don’t make it to heaven, they just want to get there by all means, at all cost.
The truth is, heaven is not a place for those who don’t want to go to hell, heaven is for those who love God and are ready to do His will. Our Lord Jesus Christ said; “if you love me, you will obey my commandments” and at the end of His ministry here on earth, He commanded His disciples saying “… go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15).
This means as believers, we have the obligation of showing others the way to salvation. We are not expected to live our lives as though we can protect it and keep it to the end. We can’t keep ourselves from sinning by living in the consciousness of sin. Our Lord Jesus Christ said; “he that keeps his life shall lose it, but he who loses his life for my sake shall keep it”. The bible in Rev. 12:11 says “And they overcame him by the blood of the lamb and by the power of their testimony, not loving their lives unto death”
The story was told of a newly employed young man in an organisation, for the first few months he was doing so well that his colleagues had to approach him to learn of his secretes, secretes about how he's managed not to break any of the company’s rules; he gets to work very early, he doesn’t sleep on duty, among others. His reply was “I'm not aware of any of the rules, I only do what I think is the right thing to do”. The following month, he got his first query, why? He became aware, and conscious, of the rules.
As long as we continue to live in the consciousness of sin, we will always be its slave, but once we understand that sin has been defeated and power over sin has been given to us by Christ, then, that is when we begin to live in victory over sin.
The kind of life lived by the early apostles is a very good example that corroborates this, according to Apostle Paul in 2Corinth. 11:23 – 33. He said they were always in one danger or the other, but never for once do they ever think of saving their lives because they are “… persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 38 – 39).
Therefore, as believers, we are not saved just for the sake of it, but to also serve as a light for others to be saved.
