The Difference by Joe La Bianca

There are two ideas about holiness I’d like to write about. One is our standing through Christ, or the way God sees believers. The other is the way we live on earth, or the things we do. Is there a difference?
If you believe there is a great difference, then you are pleasing to God. If you think there is a small difference, then you are less pleasing to God. If you believe there is no difference, then you are not pleasing to God.
First let me say that I am not writing about living in clear cut, willful sin that the Word condemns. As believers, we died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? With that out of the way, let me continue.
If you believe there is a great difference between the way God sees the believer and the way the believer lives, you are well pleasing to God. This is because you exalt Jesus and His cross, and you exhibit true humility.
If you are viewed as spotless and perfect merely because you trust in the cross of Jesus, you lift up that cross and show the utter necessity for that cross. You declare that Christ is the one thing needful and without Him there is no hope. You validate everything Jesus has done on earth, and this pleases the One who sent Jesus. You also show a meek and humble attitude by seeing yourself in truth, as the dust you are. This is greatly pleasing to God, for God doesn’t like when little worms pretend to be somebody. We are not as good as our standing in Christ, for to go to Heaven we must be perfect, and no one is perfect. So God considers us perfect based on the performance of Jesus and our faith in that performance.
If you see little difference between your standing and your performance you are heading down the road to legalism. It will not be long before you become the sad, third person in my message. How can you compare your deeds with the work of Jesus on the cross? There is a gulf between the two that is so great you cannot see the other side. You must realize that Jesus is the only good Person and not throw the word “good” around too lightly. Remember how Jesus rebuked the man who asked him, “ Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said, “Why do you call me good? There is only one that is good, God!”
Was Jesus saying that He was not good? No, because He called Himself the Good Shepherd. He asked, “ Can any one convict me of sin?” When Jesus called Himself good, He called Himself God. When we say we are good, we say we are God. When we believe that there is another sinless person in this world, we are worshipping that person. This includes Mary. We worship ourselves when we claim goodness.
It is true that God affects our lives for the better when we believe in His Son. But this inward change, though wonderful, is not the same thing as our credited goodness that God imputes to us when we just believe. The inward change of heart wrought by God enables us to overcome in this world, or to make it till the end by keeping the faith.
But God can only do so much with dust, until He changes our bodies into glorified bodies. Our standing in Christ, however, is as perfect today as when we go to Heaven.
I am spending the most time on you, this second person, because you are reachable. The first person is fine, the last, lost. But you have hope to change. If you’ve been a church goer, and you are caught up in legalism because your performance is what you think makes you saved, let me give an example to show you this is not the way.
You believe you are good, that you do good deeds. Do you think there are other people that do more good deeds than you? Sure there are. Maybe some of these people are not even Christians, but do many good things.
From this example, do you see that good things cannot save you? Some people who reject Jesus may have more good works than you, so good works do not save. If Jesus was overly concerned with works, He would have commanded all to be 100 folders. Instead He said that there are 30, 60, and 100 folders.
In Matthew 13:8, Jesus said that seed fell on good soil and produced a crop 100, 60 or 30 times what was sown. The same seed produced different levels of fruitfulness. The 30 fold ground produced 70% less than the 100 fold ground, but was still just as saved! If good fruit saves us then there should be only one level. But if it is ancillary then this shows that good fruit is of lesser importance than faith in Christ. We do not reach a certain level of deeds and then we are saved. Good fruit is only the result of simple faith in the cross. It comes along side.
The third person is he who believes there is no difference between what Jesus gives us and good works, or that Jesus is there only to change the way we live. If this is how you believe, you are lost. You do away with the cross for yourself by believing so. Who needs Jesus and what He has done if we can earn salvation by works? If Jesus just empowers people then why would He die on the cross? Jesus is not one more Moses. We had a Moses already. We have already been told we are sinners by the law. Now we can run to the Savior. The law came through Moses but grace comes through Jesus.
Your religion is a legal one. You believe that God accepts you based on the way you live. You obey laws and God rewards you with Heaven. Where is Jesus in all this? The cross of Jesus means little or nothing to you. The cross gets hidden by your church dogma. The cross is only a symbol to you, a sign on a church wall. You don’t realize that the cross is our forgiveness, acceptance with God, and the termination of the law.
You think that Jesus is a mere example to follow, a martyr who was killed for His cause. You pray, “ God, help me to love the way Jesus did. Then you will accept me”. Your love for others cannot remove one of your sins. You can give your body to be burned and you will still die a sinner without the cross. God will not accept you because of the way you live. If you saw yourself in truth, you would know this. But you fail to see that you are a sinner. Jesus said that if the Son of Man is lifted up, He will draw all men to Him. But instead you lift yourself up. You tell God and people how good you are. You follow the law to be saved without seeing your inability to fulfill the law. You are the Pharisee who stands up and prays about himself, and not the Publican who confesses his unworthiness. You’re too busy looking down at your rule book to look up and see what God has done. When will you look up to Christ?
So we have three people: One looks to the cross in trust and is given the righteousness of Christ. He also receives the new nature given by grace which enables him to finish the race by keeping the faith.
The second compares his goodness to Jesus and is moving toward apostasy.
The last sees no difference between himself and Jesus, thus denying Jesus and His mission.

Who will you be, 1,2 or 3?