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About Jesus - Steve (Stephen) Sweetman The
Cost Of Being A Christian In our day of high
inflation, we pay for the high cost of living.
It would be nice if life was free and easy, but since the events
recorded in Genesis 3, paying the price to live is our reality. That
being so, is there a cost to becoming a Christian?
If there is, why do I not hear about it any more?
It's usually invite Jesus into your heart, get forgiven, and carry
on with life.
God paid an exorbitant
price to offer us salvation free of charge.
It's our responsibility, then, to value it with our very lives,
something today's irresponsible gospel has devalued.
This has produced a care free, do whatever you want Christian
population that has cheapened the value of God's grace. With this in mind,
read an excerpt from Luke 14:27 through 33. "And
whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won't
you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money
to complete it? For if
you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it
will ridicule you, saying, 'This person began to build and wasn't able to
finish' ... In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything
you have cannot be my disciples." So what's going on?
If salvation is freely given to us, why do we have to give up
everything to be Jesus' disciples? Why
do I not hear of any cost in what has been called "the sinner's
prayer?" Jesus said that we must
count the cost of becoming a disciple, and by the way, a Christian should
be a disciple. If we fail to
communicate the cost of discipleship, we mislead those to whom we preach
into thinking salvation is just about getting forgiven and moving on with
life. We must not preach a
costless gospel that neglects our responsibility to care for it by
carrying our personal cross, but we do.
No wonder so many are falling away from the faith these days,
assuming they ever had valid faith. When
things get tough, they split, and as Jesus said, Christianity is
ridiculed, as it is today. Jesus is not just the
Christ who forgives us. He is
the Lord to whom we must submit our lives, and that's the cost of
Christian discipleship. It's
about us carrying our cross for Jesus as He carried His cross for us, a
concept lacking in much of today's church.
If we preach costly grace, it will produce valuable Christians.
If we preach cheap grace, it will produce cheap Christians.
Yes, God's grace extended to us through the process of salvation is
freely given to us, but it is certainly not cheap, and we must not live as
though it is. It's the
cost of being a Christian.
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