The Prerequisite For Salvation

There is a prerequisite and condition for calling upon God’s grace. It is not a popular subject. Most people don’t want to talk about it, and many pastors don’t preach on it. It is called sin. There is a movement among even some so-called evangelical Christians that there is not a sin nature, and overall, this is a subject that is taken very lightly and casually.

Allow me to define sin from a very broad perspective. First of all, being a sinner does not necessarily mean that someone is an evil person. It is not only an outward action seen by others, but also wrong thoughts, attitudes, motives, and wrong speech coming out of the heart. There is no such thing as a big or little sin. It is all equal in God’s sight because it falls way short of God’s righteous standards and going one’s own way apart from God, as expressed in Isaiah 53:6 and Romans 3:23. Sin is measured against God’s holiness.

A huge misunderstanding and mistake that most Christians have made is to single out certain segments of the population as being sinners, when in fact, we are all sinners, each and every one of us, even those who are righteous and religious. The sin nature means there is a natural tendency to do wrong, to go our own way, and to disobey God, with our own free will to choose.

Here are two examples of using our free will with a tendency to sin. Adam and Eve were created in a perfect environment, and they could do anything they wanted except to eat the forbidden fruit. What did they do? They chose to do the one thing that God said not to. The other example is that parents don’t have to teach their children to do wrong things; they do it as part of their nature. That is why it is so important for parents to set good examples and rear their children in a positive and godly family environment.

There is a big downplay of sin in our culture. What decades ago was considered sinful is now considered acceptable. “In our culture we talk too glibly of the very thing against which God throws his most powerful denunciations and utters his strongest warnings. Sin is not to be regarded merely as a human weakness. When we speak of sin as an accident, God calls it an abomination. When we speak of sin as a blunder, God boldly declares it to be blindness. We call sin a trifle, but God insist that it is a tragedy.” (1)

” This fact-the reality of sin-must not be brushed over lightly, because all of mankind’s problems arise from man’s sin and separation from God. As sin separates us from God, making provision for our sin is a necessary condition to reuniting us and restoring our relationship with him. The Christian Church must not drop its constant focus on man’s sin lest we lose sight of our helplessness and emptiness apart from God and our dire need for a Redeemer.” (2)

” Indwelling sin takes advantage of our natural laziness and negligence in pursuing spiritual things by enticing us to lay aside our spiritual duties, one by one. It won’t at first force God completely out of our minds. But it will talk us into thinking of him less and less, making us think we can get by with a little less prayer and shorter or fewer private devotions, until it at last convinces us that we can get along without talking to God at all.” (3)

Sin is a big deal with God. He sent his son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross for our sins. He took our sin upon himself that we might be forgiven and redeemed, provided we accept him as our Savior.

1. Billy Graham, The Reason For My Hope, Thomas Nelson, 2013, p. 44

2.David Limbaugh, The Emmaus Code, Regnery Publishing, 2015, p. 165

3. Kris Lundgaard, The Enemy Within, P&R Publishing, 2023, p. 105