Out of the Mouth of Babes

"Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." - Jesus

Last Saturday, some friends and I had an opportunity to speak at a Church on the topic of Salvation. Ron, my friend and the coordinator of the small conference, gave me the responsibility of speaking on the following: 1. What salvation is. 2. How do we obtain salvation. 3. Who saves? 4. What are we saved from?

During my talk on what salvation is, I spoke first on the state of man apart from God's regenerating work. While discussing this, I used Romans 14:23 as my main text..."everything apart from faith is sin." I spoke of how mankind is not filled with good men who has incidentally committed sin and became bad, but how all that man does - even his "good" work, is sin and therefore evil (Ezekiel 64:6). Perhaps you can already imagine the faces of the people who heard me speak like this.
Nevertheless, I continued. Finally, in hopes of making sense of what I was trying to convey, I gave an analogy of how it wouldn't matter if we dress a Leaper with new and fine clothing. I spoke of how the Leaper's corruption would soon sully the new and fine clothing. This is analogous of man, as his nature prevents his works from being wholly good. I was very surprised to see the little ones (being from 8-18) tracking with me, and some of the adults not able to follow. Some of the adults protested with comments concerning what I communicated. They weren't able to except the total lostness of man, and his inability to do anything to help his situation. For the most part, those who objected were big on doing things - even repentance, without the understanding of why we are saved by faith alone. The highlight of the day for me, was when a young man whom I shared the stage with, Brandon Thomas, spoke of being careful not to - and I'm using his words here - "make repentance your Savior." I thought that was amazing!
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