Mystery Solved

H ave you ever felt like God is hard to understand? Shrouded in mystery and cryptic in communication. Yep, I have too. Sometimes God’s personality and the way He works seem confusing. No wonder the Bible might seem confusing too.

Nowhere is this perplexity more pronounced than in trying to decipher the role of faith and works in our quest for salvation. What is God expecting of us? How good do you have to be to go to heaven when you die? On the one hand, the Bible makes it clear that salvation is free and does not require a behavioral contribution on our parts. But on the other hand, the Bible suggests that we need to count the cost and pay the price of a life of devotion.

Either God promotes a massive contradiction here, or there’s another way to unravel the tension between a free and costly connection with God. Turns out, there’s a clear and biblical way to solve this mystery. It’s a bit like finding a decoder device or the missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle.

The secret to solving this mystery is found in embracing an all-important distinction. Becoming a Christian is not the same thing as living as one. You don’t have to be a physician in pediatrics to realize that the birth of a baby and the growth of that baby into adulthood are not the same thing. The birth event and the growth process are distinct. So too, believing in Jesus for your salvation (becoming a Christian) is a different and necessary first step before one can develop and mature (as a growing Christian). This is the distinction between salvation and discipleship.

In acknowledging this difference between salvation and discipleship, respected theologian, Charles Ryrie suggests that,

In what may be the most popular devotional of all time, My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers helps break the code of the Christian life with these words, “Our Lord never lays down the conditions of discipleship as the conditions of salvation.” In other words, we must approach becoming a Christian differently than living as one. The conditions for the two are not the same. This simple distinction forms the basis for the entire Christian life.

Confuse salvation and discipleship and you will migrate toward a works-based salvation—always attempting to earn, keep, or prove your salvation by your behavior. But salvation is apart from works (Ephesians 2:8-9). Yet, unlike our free salvation, following Jesus as His disciple is a costly endeavor that requires the investment of our lives (Luke 14:26-28).

This distinction between salvation and discipleship is at the center of how life is meant to work. Some Bible passages describe the free offer of salvation through belief alone. And some passages point to our responsibility as believers in Jesus to invest our lives wholeheartedly for Him. Those passages in the Bible are not saying the same thing. There is a distinction between becoming a Christian and living as one. Mystery solved.