Salvation is a Gift

By Anonymous Author

January 1, 2015

Dear Readers: We welcome your comments and questions. Below is a letter that we recently received, containing different points of view.

Dear Amish Voice:

I feel sad that some people think that they can earn their salvation and fear not entering into Heaven. Ephesians 2:8-9 tells us that our salvation is truly a gift and not of our own works.

Songs and prayers repeated only from the head do not please God. God is not impressed with vain repetitions and man-made traditions. The Pharisees also had them and Jesus rebuked them for it. Man looks at the outer appearance, but God observes our hearts. We need to pray and sing from our hearts!

It is sad when I see the distance and lack of feelings and love shown for the children by some parents. It is so sad the way some seem to turn on their children if they leave. The Bible says we are to forgive 70 times 7. Can you imagine Jesus ignoring us and refusing to be with us because we do not wear a robe like He did, or read the Bible in our own language instead of Hebrew? Christian parents should want to guide their children and raise them in the admonition of the Lord and show them how much God loves them and the most precious and painful sacrifice Christ made for them so they could be saved.

Ephesians1:13 says that after we trust in Christ, we are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise until our redemption. I didn’t say it. You didn’t say it. God said it. Ephesians 3:12 says we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of Him. You cannot be confident if you are constantly worrying about your salvation. I am thankful that I can sing praises from my heart. David was filled with songs that he sang to the Lord, as seen in the book of the Psalms. God wants daily individual communion with us. After all, He died for each one of us. The veil of the temple was rent from top to bottom showing that it was of God and not of man. It was to show us that because of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection, we now have access to enter boldly before the throne where Jesus is making intercession for us.

To try to do anything of ourselves would make Christ’s sacrifice void. He has given us a great gift, but people stumble over it because they put too high a value on themselves, instead of admitting that they can do nothing of themselves.

Repetitions and traditions which are not scriptural date at least all the way back to the Pharisees. Why would Christ go through all that He did if we could redeem ourselves with our own actions? Our Abba (Daddy) Father loved us so much that He sent His only begotten Son to do for us what we could not do (Romans 8:31-33).

Philippians 1:6 says, “Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” Salvation is, from start to finish, from first to last, the work of God Himself in us. He sought us, He found us. He began the good work in us and He keeps us. How prideful of us to think otherwise!

I John 5:13 says, “These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that you may know that you have eternal life and that you may believe on the name of the Son of God.”

- Paul Miller

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