To Each His Own

To each his own, but I am convinced, by many infallible proofs, that the Bible is the eternal, inspired and inerrant Word of God. There is every reason in the world to trust its teachings, apply its principles and hope in its promises, and no good reason not to. Skeptics try to discredit it, wicked men do their best to flee from it, and its enemies have long sought to obliterate it, even outlaw it, but still, the words of Is. 40.8 ring clear and strong: The word of our God shall stand forever.It is never wrong and never, ever irrelevant. Now, what does happen, and often, is that people in general look at the church in general, or most congregations in particular, and they say, and pollsters ask them all the time, and they say, “The church is irrelevant; I can’t relate to it or its message.” That is not something Christians should just write off; we need to seriously consider just why such statements are made. To be sure, there is nothing wrong with the Bible; it is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But far too often, there is something very wrong about how professing believers present, or more accurately, how we represent, or even misrepresent, the truth of God’s Word.

We send a muddled message to the world due to a blatant disconnect between what we say we believe, and what we actually believe as revealed by how we live our lives. We speak in cliches, we run around in cliques, and we show disdain and disapproval for those who don’t look, speak, dress or act as we do, or how we think they should. And many churches, and the individuals of which they are comprised, have an aura about them, that we are self absorbed and self serving. That naturally turns people off. We need to get back to basics, in a lot of stuff. We need to trim the fat in our lives, literally and figuratively. We need to take a good, long hard look at what there is about us that keeps the world and the unsaved from hearing and embracing the plain, simple message of the Bible.

If you are wondering what IS the core teaching of Scripture, let me give it to you, in a nutshell: Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and believing on Him we can have pardon for sins and eternal life in His name. On that basis and from that position of being made a new creature in Christ, we can then love the Lord our God with all our heart, and soul, and mind and strength, and others as ourselves. That is pretty much it; the “Bible for Dummies”; Cliff’s Notes on abundant living. You can boil the Gospel down to that. Let me put it another way: All men are sinners, headed to a devil’s hell; Jesus is the only Savior. You come to Him, in repentance and by grace through faith, and you receive the gift of everlasting life; and then you live to honor and exalt Him. Jesus said, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10) It is that simple.