Why Salvation Must Be a Gift

For God to maintain His integrity, salvation must be offered freely.

Let’s see why this is the case. If He is a God who demands a certain amount of good works to enter His heaven, then for Him to be truly honest He would be required by His own Holiness to tell us what those demands are. In other words, how good must we be? So He makes it abundantly clear with the following assessment of human goodness:

“There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God” (Rom. 3:11-2).

He can’t just say “be good” without stipulating how good. Otherwise He defrauds the human race by leaving them in a hopeless state, and to defraud is a sin which God is incapable of committing. We would be comparing ourselves to others trying to figure out on the goodness scale where we fit. That is a frightening thought. This is religion at its best, or should I say at its worst?

Years ago my brother and I were sharing the gospel with my dad while driving in the car. My dad felt he had lived a good life and would then merit heaven. I posed this question” “From Hitler to Mother Teresa, where on that line do you see yourself?” I think he felt he was 85% good. I then asked him what would happen if he died and found out he needed to be 86% good? He began to panic because he knew no matter what percentage he picked I would raise the ante. If he picks 90%, I’m going with 95. Where will this lead? Heaven is perfect and 99% won’t cut it. The 1% of imperfection will pollute God’s Kingdom. God never lets good people into heaven. He lets perfect people into heaven.

To leave us stranded by having no idea what He demands in goodness is nothing less than cruel, and God is not cruel. Religion creates the cruelty and leaves you defrauded, which is why salvation must be a gift. But we still have not answered the goodness question. Here is the answer: 100% perfection is needed to enter God’s perfect Kingdom. What???! You read that correctly.

The natural question is, “How do I get that perfection?” As usual you would expect God to be upfront on how to enter His Kingdom. No guessing, which is frightening, particularly if you guessed wrong. Jesus said unless a man is born again he cannot enter the Kingdom of God. Where do I get the perfection I need to be born again and enter the kingdom? Here is the clear, unambiguous answer” “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). Did you catch that? I can be as righteous as God Himself, and that is the perfect righteousness I need to enter His perfect heaven.

This is what is called double imputation. To impute is to put to the account of another. Jesus puts to our account His righteousness, and we put to His account our sin. This is how we gain the perfection to enter heaven. He takes on my sin and I take on His righteousness. Now that is a good deal. His perfect righteousness is placed to my account as the perfection I need to be born again, leaving the kingdom of darkness and entering the kingdom of God’s dear Son.

But there is a catch. I knew it … there is no free lunch. True, but we are not talking about lunch but eternal life. The Lord beats to death, from the Old Testament to the New Testament, that man has no inherent righteousness and needs an alien righteousness, which is placed to our account when we put our faith in Christ and Christ alone. When this happens all of Christ’s perfection is placed to our account and we now possess the absolute assurance of where we will spend eternity. That is why the Gospel means “good news.” It is not good news to guess if my human goodness will get me into heaven if I have no idea what the scale of goodness is.

So if salvation is not a gift then God defrauds, frustrates, and leaves us in the dark regarding our eternal destiny. This is not the God of the Bible. “For by grace are you saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast” (Eph. 2:8-9). How clear can it be?