SALVATION LOOPHOLES?
The Bible clearly states that all are conceived in sin: “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psa. 51:5). “The fact of congenital depravity is stated, not only here, but also in Job 14:4; Psalm 58:3; it is also implied in Isaiah 43:27 and Hosea 6:7.” The original Hebrew text has “Behold! In depravity I was travailed”. See also the following verses: 2 Chron. 6:36; Psa. 143:2; Isa. 53:6; 64:6; Jer. 17:9; 13:23; Eccl. 7:29; 9:3; Mic. 7:2-4; Mk. 7:21-23; 10:18; Lk. 18:19; Jn. 8:34; Rom. 3:9-12,23; 5:7,8,12,19; 7:18; 8:7,8; 11:32; Eph. 2:1,2,12,13; 4:5,17,18; 1 Jn. 1:8-10.
The only answer to man’s hereditary sin problem is the grace of God through Jesus Christ the Saviour of God’s chosen people. All men, whether they are young or old, whether they are sick, or well, whether they are lost, or saved, carry within them the sin seed which eternally condemns us all by nature. The Word of God speaks of those who are now saved as once being “…by nature the children of Wrath, even as others” (Eph. 2:3). Intrinsically, all are not the children of God, but the children of the Wrath of God. All are children by creation, but they are not in the family of God, they are not of the Household of Faith by birth, but only by a re-birth into God’s Kingdom according to His grace (see Jn. 3:3,5). Scripture states that salvation is by God alone through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christ said “…I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me” (Jn.14:6). He that hath an ear let him hear.
No one gets to Jesus because they died as an infant, or because they didn’t die as an infant. No one gets saved by default, by a non-payment of their sins by the Lord Jesus Christ. A man’s sins, and the punishment due unto him, are not something which is overlooked, or glossed over, by God under any circumstances no matter how tragic they may be. Man thinks he has invented innumerous ways to get saved, and convinced himself of many loopholes that he thinks will excuse him from the Day of Judgement and the full extent of God’s Wrath, however, not one of these inventions has ever resulted in anyone’s salvation, for none of them have ever dealt with the full payment of sin, or led to the establishment of a perfect Righteousness.
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Man’s excuse-filled, and loophole-laden false ways to salvation are the evidence that man, by nature, is lost and utterly without God, without the true and only way to salvation, and without any hope of ever finding it. There is nothing about man’s age, mode of life, or death, which will influence God in any way to save him. Salvation is not according to anything of man, therefore, it can only be according to God’s will, grace, mercy, purpose and love. Salvation is of the Lord, and He gives it to whomsoever He wills. God says, “…I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy” (Rom. 9:15,16). One gets to Jesus, one is saved, ONLY if the Lord Jesus Christ laid down His life for them and revealed the Father to them (see Matt. 11:27).
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Extenuating circumstances and ‘special’ situations have never saved anyone! They have never exempted anyone from being judged according to the only Standard by which God judges the saved, and the lost: Perfection. Human sentimentalism, the romanticizing of a man and salvation, and the silly thought of God Who is Love being ‘too nice to send anyone to Hell’, fails to properly take into account the reality that God is a Holy God and a God of Justice. It also fails to acknowledge the fact of man’s sinful and accursed state, and what it takes for a man to be saved.
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Contrary to humanistic thinking, man is the lowest of the low! Man is not even worthy enough for God to cast a momentary glance toward. Listen to the Scriptures themselves as they refer to man’s sinful, abominable state before a Holy God: “… the heavens are not clean in His sight. How much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity like water?” (Job 15:15,16 cf. Psa. 8:4; 144:3; Isa. 40:17; Jer. 17:9; Eccl. 9:3). “The LORD looked down from Heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one” (Psa. 14:2,3) “There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God” (Rom. 3:11). This is the humanly unsolvable problem of the sin seed which resides in every man by nature. To be saved man must be holy, but he cannot be holy. There is nothing man can do to rectify his spiritually dead state. Man is deadlocked in sin.
“How then can man be justified with God? or how can he be clean that is born of a woman? Behold even to the moon, and it shineth not; yea, the stars are not pure in His sight. How much less man, that is a worm? and the son of man, which is a worm?” (Job 25:4-6). “…What is man that Thou art mindful of him?...” (Heb. 2:6 cf. Job 7:17; Psa. 8:4). “Who is like unto the Lord our God, Who dwelleth on high, Who humbleth Himself to behold the things that are in Heaven, and in the earth!” (Psa. 113:5,6). Every man is a worm, who, even “…at his best state, is altogether vanity…surely every man is vanity” (Psa. 39:5,11). "Behold, He putteth no trust in His saints; yea, the heavens are not clean in His sight. How much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity like water?" (Job 15:15,16). “Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin?” (Prov. 20:9).
The death of Christ is the insurmountable and irrefutable evidence that Almighty God is profoundly serious concerning the matter of sin and the punishment of all sinners, no matter who they are or what their condition, who have not had their sins punished in Christ. God’s inflexible justice demands death for sin, even when that sin was charged to God the Son Himself. Nothing that man does, hasn’t done, will do, or won’t do, or that which happens to him over which he has no control, plays any part in anyone’s salvation. There are no mitigating circumstances by which God can justly overlook a man’s sins and sin nature, and, thereby, reduce, let alone waive, the eternal penalty which sin has incurred.
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The fact that Hell is eternal, that there are no reduced sentences, is testament to the reality that the sin seed resides in all men by nature, and if a man’s sins have not been washed away by the blood of Christ, there can be nothing but eternal punishment which awaits him. Only the blood of Christ could, and has washed away the sins of all for whom He died. Hell is not for the rehabilitation, or purification, of any, but for the punishment of all for whom Christ did not die, whose sins were not blotted out by Him, and whose trust was never in Him. Salvation only comes by the grace, purpose and good pleasure of Almighty God. Christ is the Way, the ONLY Way, and there is no salvation for anyone without Him. The redemption of sin, and the imputation of the Righteousness of Christ is the only way a man can be saved.
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THERE ARE NO EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES FOR ANY MAN WHICH GOD WILL USE TO EXCUSE HIS SIN, OR OVERRIDE SALVATION’S GOVERNING PRINCIPLE OF SALVATION BY GRACE ALONE THROUGH FAITH ALONE. Any such act would do despite to Christ and all that He endured for the sake of His people. All men are conceived in sin, and are deserving of nothing, but the Wrath of God whatever their situation or circumstances might be. Whether a person is confined to a wheelchair, or to whatever handicap has befallen them, or to a life which is impeded by sickness or chronic pain of any kind, nothing can make a man innocent before a Holy God, and preclude him from future punishment. Nothing man does, or whatever he is a victim of, can ever excuse his sin before God.
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Sickness, and tragedy, are not the Saviour! Patiently enduring hardship, or suffering silently through circumstances and situations that are almost unbearable can contribute nothing to salvation. In all that man does, or endures, he is profitless. The love of God toward His people appeared “Not by works of Righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us…” (Titus 3:5). Nothing, and no one, can separate a man from his sin except the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Punishment for sin is not something which is restricted to the healthy, or overtly wicked, but to all who were not given by the Father to the Son. “All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me…” (Jn. 6:37). All that the Father does not have mercy toward and does not give unto the Son shall not come to Him. The only way anyone shall come to the Lord Jesus, is if the Father gives them to Him. Horrible deaths, murders and tragedies are simply part of man’s sin-fuelled world, the outcome, and extension, of his original sin against God. “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12). “For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:21,22,45). Those who are not found in Christ shall remain spiritually dead. God having sent His Saviour into the world is the clearest of all evidences that no man by nature is a child of God, or can do anything to make himself so. The need for God to act by grace if any are to be saved shows that no one can do anything to become a child of God. Man is, by nature, a child of God’s very real Wrath, and is in need of salvation which can only be provided by grace through the gift of faith in the obedience of the Saviour.
It is vitally important to note that no one is saved based on what are perceived to be ‘special’ circumstances, or situations, or because a person was murdered (whether in the womb or out of the womb), or because they were old, or young, blind or deaf, stillborn, or because they were your cousin, mother, father, child or friend, or because they died whilst helping others or because they were such nice people, or because they were your kindly old neighbours, or trusted friends, etc. If this were not the case where would the loopholes ever stop, and the subsequent excuses ever end? Make room for one lie, and you will soon be overwhelmed by lies, and your whole theology will be governed by fantasies and falsehoods, rather than the Word of God.
NO ONE IS INNOCENT!! “The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies” (Psa. 58:3). The deaf are not innocent, the blind are not innocent, the physically, or mentally, disabled are not innocent, the child is not innocent, the baby in the womb is not innocent, for all are conceived in sin. People love to make excuses for themselves, and for deceased loved ones thinking that some physical deformity or mental disability is somehow an excuse for their wretched sinful state, and even a veritable gateway to Heaven. Such people fail to realise the cold hard fact that all mankind, including the deaf, the blind, the mute, the physically and mentally crippled, suffers from the ULTIMATE disability: AN EXTREME STATE OF SPIRITUAL DEATH!!
No physical or mental disability could ever exceed the greatest disability which has engulfed the entire cursed race of man because of his eternal separation from God by sin. Man is riddled with disabilities, the greatest of which is a sinful nature and a carnal mind which is by nature hostile to the true God. “He that is asleep may awake; but the sinner is in a state of death, which implies not only a cessation from all vital actions, but an absolute disability to perform them. The understanding is disabled for any spiritual perception, the will for any holy inclinations, the whole man is disabled for the sense of his wretched state. This is the spiritual death which justly exposes the sinner to death temporal and eternal.” All are products of sin and stand guilty before a Holy God. “…There is none righteous…FOR all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:10,23). The whole race of man is under a curse: the curse of sin, and, therefore, be they healthy or sick, whole in body and mind, or incapacitated in any way, all are deserving only of the Wrath of God.
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The Lord Jesus says: “…Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature. HE THAT BELIEVETH (THE GOSPEL) AND IS BAPTIZED SHALL BE SAVED; BUT HE THAT BELIEVETH NOT SHALL BE DAMNED” (Mk. 16,15,16).
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REPENT AND BELIEVE THE GOSPEL, OR YOU WILL DIE IN YOUR SINS
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Excerpted from my book ‘For God So Loved…WHO?’