About Jesus     Steve Sweetman Home Page     Previous Section Next Section Chapter Three Struggling With Guilt   I do not know if you can relate to this or not but while I was growing up I think that I spent half of my church life down at the altar on my knees. You say, what was wrong with that? Well there was nothing wrong with that. It was a good place to be and most likely did me some good. On the other hand for some reason it never changed my situation. I still had all the feelings from my unresolved guilt. Here is the picture. After seven verses of the hymn "Just As I Am", I left my seat and went up to the front and knelt down at the altar. There I prayed. There I cried, confessing my sin and after a short time left that place feeling good because of the blessing of the Lord. I guess every other Sunday I got saved all over again. Come the next morning I would awake and get off to school as usual. Sometimes that feeling from the night before would still be lingering, and at other times it was long gone. I would come home for the evening and before going to bed I would pray and read my Bible. Reading and praying was not my most favourite thing but I felt compelled to do it. I read and prayed just enough to satisfy my young evangelical conscience. I still remember the process of reading the Bible. I would read just enough to get by and be guilt free. That usually was one page of my very large print Bible. One page it was. If a verse happened to carry on to the next page, well that was too bad. My conscience was clean after one page. That was the way it was even after many times at the altar. It did not seem to matter how many times I was at that altar. The outcome was always the same. There was tears one night and forced Bible reading the next. On and on it went until I was nineteen years old. I do not know why all that changed, other than the Lord saw fit to make that change in my life. One cold dark night in February 1970 I was watching Billy Graham on television. Oh yes, that was something else. I always had a hard time passing by Billy Graham on television. To watch channel eleven and the hockey game I had to pass by channel ten. Back in those days we did not have remotes that could skip unwanted channels. Anyway, one night on my way to channel eleven Graham was preaching away on channel ten. What could I possibly do. I really wanted to watch eleven but there was a Christian program on ten. My conscience would not allow me to watch channel eleven, at least not right away. I would have to spend a few minutes on channel ten at least. So there I was that night sitting on channel ten when I wanted channel eleven. I stayed there longer than normal that night. A matter of fact I watched the whole program and never did get to the hockey game. Graham spoke on being hot or cold. You know the verses that come from the book of Revelation. They are pretty strong words. That night as soon as the program was over I went straight to my room since it was ten o'clock which was my usual bed time. This night was different. This night was special. This night the Lord did something in my heart. At the time I did not realize what He had done but He definitely must have felt enough was enough when it came to me. After getting undressed and into my night clothes I knelt by my bed for no longer than ten seconds. I said to the Lord in a very unemotional way, "Lord, if I am not forgiven please forgive me". That was all. I then went to bed. It was only ten seconds but something really did take place within me, something that I did not notice until the next evening when I went to open my Bible for my normal routine. I read my first page and then I actually finished up that verse which was at the bottom of the page and carried over to the next. I even went beyond that point. I finished two pages and then three and then where I stopped I do not remember. I do remember enjoying it. I enjoyed it so much that the next day I went down to our local Bible book store and bought a new large print Good News For Modern Man. I still have that book today. It has given me many good times of reading ever since. I no longer read my Bible and prayed for the sake of appeasing my guilt. I no longer went to church and participated solely out of duty. The difference was that I wanted to do those things and I liked to do them. Before that particular evening I was never really sure if I would end up in heaven or hell. Since then I have never had one moment of doubt. Besides that I know that I do not stand  in a position of guilt before the Judge. Along with it my guilty feelings have disappeared as well. In the next few years the Lord took me on a trip through various ways and means and showed me what it all meant. That is what His Salvation was about and how it worked in ones life. What I learnt in those years I would like to continue to relate to you.   Chapter Four By Faith Alone "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever should believe on Him should not perish but have everlasting life." There is not another scripture more well known than John 3:16. You could write a whole book on just this one verse by going through it word by word. I will not do that but I do want to look at the word believe. To believe is to put faith in, or to trust, or rely on. This is not just a mental belief. It is a belief that comes from the heart and then is understood by the mind. When it comes to Salvation faith is relying on God's provisions for us. The Lord has provided a way for us to be free of guilt and to be reunited with Him. We need to receive this as a gift from him just as we would receive a gift from a friend at Christmas If you believe in God's provision you can say that you know that there is nothing you can do to be saved. Jesus has done all that needs to be done and He has given it to you as a gift. That is to say you are trusting in him, or relying on him alone, and I do mean alone. I do not want to get bogged down too much here in a discussion of faith verses works. I will just say this. Salvation is by faith alone. There is no work that we can do to earn salvation. Good works follow faith and are a result of faith and God's work in a life. Faith is not a result of good works and neither is salvation. Faith is only strengthened by our good work. Faith is not a product of our good works. We need to have this point burned into our hearts and minds. To suggest there is something that we can do to earn salvation is to tell Jesus what He did was just not good enough and I cannot think of a worse sin than that. It is also putting us in a pretty lofty position, somewhat on the same level as the Lord Himself by thinking He needs our help. I guess when it comes to faith I do not think of it as something we get once, and then get more of later, and then even more later on. I see it as that little grain of mustard seed that is within us, which grows and becomes mature and stronger. Here good works has its place. It is one of the ways our faith matures. It is not the only way. There are many other ways as well. I hope that you have understood my point. I do not know of any more important fact. I am afraid we as evangelicals though have not fully understood this. We have added our own rules at times just as the Pharisees did when Jesus was on earth in his human body. I am reminded of what Paul has said in his letter to the Galatians (chapter 2 and 3). He is quite upset with them, for as he puts it, having begun in the Spirit and now continuing in the flesh. By this he means that they were saved by faith, with the enabling power of God's Spirit. Now after that was established they were adding rules, such as circumcision, to maintain their salvation. As I have said, there are no rules that we can add. We are saved by faith and we live by faith. This Galatian temptation seems to always be prevalent in the church. The extra rules can be church attendance, not going to movies, or any other "not" that we have propagated over the years. As an aside, I feel it is much more effective to major on the positives instead of the negatives. Like, let's pray, instead of don't smoke. Or like, pray for the government instead of complaining about it. Or, provide your children with good Christian activity, instead of simply telling them not to dance. Once again salvation is by faith in Jesus and his provision that He made on the cross and not of any work we can do. We cannot boast of anything. We can only be eternally thankful to Him. He is the founder and finisher of our faith. All that we can do is co-operate with Him as He gives us strength to do what He wants. Chapter Five Living By Faith   We have now established the fact that salvation is by faith alone. When we first believe we then become a son of God just as Jesus said in John chapter one. Thus we have that legal relationship with God our Father that I talked about earlier. We are sons. That relationship then was established by faith alone and not by works. Now let me say that this relationship continues and remains by faith alone and not by works. Once we have believed we have the relationship and then after we need to work on the fellowship aspect. Faith, trust, or reliance on Jesus is the foundation for everything we do as Christians. The great faith chapter in Hebrews eleven says that it is impossible to please God without faith. You can see how important faith really is. I am about to present you with another critical point so take heed, and again do not give up on me. Our relationship is first established by faith. We get saved by faith alone, not because of good works. Our relationship with Him remains and stays intact by faith alone and not by works, whether good or bad. Another way of putting it is like this. We don't get saved by good works and therefore we do not get unsaved by bad works or by sinful acts. Yet another way to put it would be this way. We become sons of God not by good works but by faith. On the other hand we do not get divorced from God or cut off from Him by bad works. This is the story of the prodigal son once again. He was away from his father and doing all sorts of bad works but he still was a son. He was a son out of fellowship with his father. Well this presents a big question then. What then gets us unsaved? What then causes us to lose that legal relationship? Some believe that once you have that legal relationship you cannot lose it. Let me put you at ease just a little. I do believe that there is a way out of salvation. There is one way in, one door, and there is only one way out. That is, you go out by the same door in which you entered. There is no back door when it comes to salvation. There is only one door and that is the front door. Don't think that you can climb out the windows because you can't. Jesus said in John 10:1 that some would try to climb into the sheepfold some other way. He told us that there was no other way. There was only that one door. He was that door. Again the only way out of salvation is the way in which you entered. I would like to repeat myself here and say that there is absolutely no back door to salvation. There is no back door in the household of faithful believers. We enter into salvation by faith and the only way out is by total unbelief, total denial. Good works can’t save us, neither can they keep us saved. This truth must be completely understood and accepted in order for you as a Christian to mature and progress beyond the foundations. Chapter Six The Unpardonable Sin   Did you ever wonder what the unforgivable sin was? As a child I was always puzzled by this question. Again I remember Sunday school class and every so often that subject would seem to appear. I never did get an answer I was completely happy with. Maybe the teacher did not know the answer. I am not sure we ever did get a direct answer to that question but I just knew it had to do with sex. Tell me, what else could it be related to. Sex was a subject that no one touched and it was quite obvious that no one wanted to touch the unpardonable sin. So I just put two and two together and came up with sex. Now I knew that sex within the context of marriage was alright. The Lord did not mind that. So the unpardonable sin was adultery. I knew of a few people in that situation back then. That meant at one time these people became Christians but then lost their salvation when they committed adultery. Is adultery then the way out of salvation? Is it the sin that can not ever be forgiven?No, I really do not think that adultery is the way to lose your salvation. I know that it is definitely a bad work, and a sin that needs to be avoided at all cost but it is not the way to get unsaved. The way we are saved is by faith and therefore the way we lose our salvation is through unbelief, just the opposite of faith. Now I do not mean doubt, or wavering faith. I mean out and out unbelief, rejection of the Lord. Another point is this. When we first got saved did we have a lot of faith? No, we had very little. We hardly knew what to put our faith in. So in like fashion a little bit of doubt is not going to get us kicked out of the Kingdom. Unbelief then is that unpardonable sin. It only stands to reason. Jesus died on the cross to forgive our sins and so He did. All of our sins are forgiven, even the worst of them. They are all forgiven, from that little white lie to murder. The one sin that is not forgiven,neither can be forgiven is unbelief. If Jesus could forgive us for not believing in his provision then there would have been no reason for him to die. We would all be forgiven and there would be no need to have any discussion about faith and forgiveness. Can you see what I an saying? Our unbelief in the cross cannot be forgiven. It is an impossibility. It is simply illogical and beyond reason. The picture then looks like this. You have a man who comes to the Lord and becomes a Christian by believing and accepting God's provision. He is growing in the Lord and struggles along like most of us do. There are the little sins and then there are bigger ones. We are not all perfect, right. One day he commits a big one. I mean a really big one. Let's make it murder. Where then does he stand? Did that sin cause him to lose his salvation? Were all of the smaller sins alright and were they forgivable? Was there a difference between this one and the rest? There is no difference. The Lord forgave murder just as He forgave all the rest. Well a little later on this man began to think that this Christian stuff was not for him and one day he made a critical decision. He changed his mind. He decided no longer to believe and accept the facts of salvation. It was at this point that he lost his salvation. It was at this point he turned back and went out that same door of faith that he once entered into. At this point he found himself in a very tragic place. He was outside the relm of forgiveness. That unbelief cannot be or never will be forgiven. This was a man who once tasted the gifts of God and now is out on his own. Hebrews 6:4 says a very scary thing about such a man in this place. It says that it is impossible to renew such a man to repentance again. I would like to think that the Lord might give him another chance but it appears according to this verse that there is none. At this point I would like to think that I have misunderstood Hebrews 6:4 but I am not sure that I have. On the other hand I am not sure that the Lord would not take a truly repentant man back in light of other scripture. Now this presents another question. Maybe you feel that you have fallen into such a place like this man has. Well maybe you have, but there is a good chance that you haven't. If you are reading this and still have some kind of desire for the Lord even though you feel so far away from Him and doubt that you could ever get back, you most likely have not reached that point. If you have reached that point you most likely would not be reading this or even would want to. You would be rejecting all that was even closely associated with God and Jesus. Before leaving this chapter I need to reiterate my point once again. It is a most critical idea to understand. It is unreasonable and illogical to think that the Lord can forgive unbelief and rejection of what He has done. It is in the relm of possibility for Him to do it but you must realize if He did forgive unbelief then there would be no reason for the cross. He simply just would have made a proclamation saying, "all people would now be Christian and in right relationship with God". He chose to go through the cross. He has said," in order to be saved you must believe", resulting in all sin being forgiven. If you do not believe you are not forgiven and you remain lost in the unforgivable sin of unbelief. Jesus calls this sin blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, that is saying no to Jesus' call to you. Therefore faith in God's grace gets us into salvation and total unbelief or rejection of this grace gets us out. Nothing else can get us out. Picture this one door that swings both ways. On the outside of the door you see the word faith. That is the way in and once you are in and you view the door from that perspective you see the word unbelief on the inside of the door. Unbelief then becomes that only way out. There is no back door to salvation. To me these truths left me with a great sense of security. I knew that the Lord was not up there in heaven with His finger floating over the delete button ready to wipe me off his list at the first missup I made. This left and still leaves me feeling and knowing where I stand with the Lord and my eternal destination. Can you see and understand what I am saying here. This was the answer to my questions and insecurities of my youth. This was the answer to my guilt and the resulting feelings I had struggled with for so long. I knew for sure that I was in God's Kingdom. So what place does sin have in our discussion? Keep reading and find out.  Previous Section Next Section Home Page