Eternal Life

Modern day Christianity teaches that in order to receive eternal life we need to ask Jesus into our heart and ask Him to forgive our sins. If we don't we are lost and will spend eternity separated from God.

This idea that eternal life can be attained by simply saying a few words is challenged in Mark 10:17-27. A man asks Jesus “what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?” Jesus gave him a shortened version of the Ten Commandments. The man said that he had kept them all from his youth. He evidently was a moral man. Jesus then told him to sell everything that he has and give the money to the poor. Also He tells the man to take up his cross and follow Him. The man realizing he couldn‘t (or wouldn’t) do these things went away sad.

Jesus asked the man to give up something that was very important to him. How many people today sell everything they have in order to be saved? Probably next to none. If any one of us was asked to give up the most valuable thing in our lives, we would all struggle to do it. Where our treasure is that is were our heart is. Jesus was asking the man to give up his heart. This is impossible for any of us to do. If you give up your heart you give up your life.

He also asked the man to take up his cross and follow Him. Where was Jesus going? He was headed to the cross to die. Was He asking this man to die also on a cross next to him in order to attain eternal life? Possibly.

The disciples were astonished at Jesus’ words to the man and posed a question to Him. “Who then can be saved?” Perhaps they were thinking that Jesus’ requirements were too difficult for anyone to qualify. Jesus answered them by saying, “With men it is impossible, but not with God, with God all things are possible.”

In other words, redemption (eternal life) is only possible through God. Men cannot attain eternal life by what they do. If our works were what qualified us, what and how much would we have to do in order for it to be enough? The very thought that our feeble human abilities can earn the gift of eternal life from God is an insult to Jesus and the price that He paid.

I believe that God saved mankind without any of us having a part in it. Ephesians 2:5 says “even when we were dead in trespasses, (God) made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)”. We were redeemed while yet in our sins. It was not our believing in Jesus that redeemed us. It was not our asking for forgiveness for our sins which redeemed us. It was Jesus’ work on the Cross that brought redemption to the whole world. I Timothy 4:10 says “…we trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of those that believe.” Jesus’ death, burial, resurrection, and ascension back to his father brought redemption and made it possible for each human to become a believer.