HOW DO I GET A TICKET TO LIVE FOREVER?

 “God is love”  The Bible says so.  So God is a lover and as such, He loves to give gifts.  So, as a way of showing you His way, I am going to present everything He offers us as a series of gifts.  This is a new and novel way of presenting the Christian faith, but it is the best way of getting to know our God

We start life with a parcel of three gifts, even though God gave them at different times.  The first gift is the gift of creation, the universe, our world and everything in it.  The second gift is Jesus Christ, His birth into this world, His life and His death on the cross.  The third gift is myself, my life.  Now, as far as I am concerned, the gifts of my life and my world appear to come at the same time.  Unfortunately, they are both very tenuous and can disappear at any time and, most certainly, are only temporary at best.  Life’s biggest conundrum is how to hang on to these two gifts so that we can enjoy them forever.  God’s way of answering this question is to keep urging us to accept that second gift of Jesus Christ.  If only we will accept this gift, He assures us that we will live forever, which means we won’t lose those first two gifts.

The Bible says, “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life.”  Eternal life is what we need in order to hold onto our lives and the place we live them in.  The gift of eternal life is absolutely free and exceptionally easy to acquire, so much so that it is hard to figure out why people prefer to refuse it.  The fact is, we are in a state of rebellion against God and we were born in that state and we are all in various degrees of not wanting to give up on that state.  But if any of us are prepared to renounce our rebellion and accept the deal He offers, then I will now proceed to show you how you can take him up on His offer.

To show you how very easy it is to be saved forever,  I am going to quote a string of references or texts from the Bible.  Where I quote the Bible, I will state which book, what chapter and what verse I am referring to

How simple can it get

First of all, let's see what Jesus himself said.

John 5:24 "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life."

 John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."

John 3:15 "that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life."

John 3:18 "Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son."

John 6:29 Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent."

John 8:24 "I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be, you will indeed die in your sins."

John 11:26 "And whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"

John 20:31 But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

Now let's see what some of His followers said.

Acts 16:31 They replied, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved - you and your household."

Romans 10:9,10 "That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved."

Heb 11:6 "And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him."

1 John 5:13 "I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life." etc. etc.

There are many more, but if these aren't enough I don't know how many will be enough.

You see what I mean when I say it's very simple. If you believe that the God of the Bible made this world, loves it's people and sent his son Jesus Christ to contact us and tell us about God's attitude and take upon himself the punishment which should have been ours,  then you are saved from death and Hell and you will live forever, with God, after this life is over. That's it. Simple, isn't it? This is the exact opposite process to what lost us everything in the first place. God placed before Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden the truth about life and death. They chose to disbelieve what he said and instead chose to believe a lie told to them about God. The only way back to God is to renounce that lie and believe again the truth about God.

Jesus Christ who himself was God, came down to be born to a human mother Mary so becoming a true member of our human family. In this capacity, as the new representative of the race, he was able to live a perfect life to satisfy God's demands for living for mankind. Then he died in our place to satisfy the law of sin and death so that now all we have to do is accept the deal, go free of our sentence and live forever.  God loves people, that’s why He does all this.  He loves us so much that He is prepared to accept us, just as we are, warts and all.  No matter how rotten we are, He will take us, one and all, without exception.  The great problem is not that He won’t have us; it’s that we won’t have Him; and that’s the only problem.  For a thousand reasons, we can’t or won’t believe that He is happy to have us back.  Look, there is one simple, supreme question, “Do I have eternal life; will I live forever?”  There are a thousand answers to that question, but only one acceptable answer.  Mankind has responded all the way from, “NO, and I don’t want it.”  To an emphatic, unequivocal, YES.  All the other ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ and ‘maybes’, are total nonsense.  With the absolutely free gift God is giving us, there can only be a host of stupid answers or a firm, “YES.”

Whoopee, reinheritance

I can't tell you the whole story here, you must read the stories for yourself. Get at least half way through the New Testament and you should have the right picture. What you will find is that Jesus cleaned up Adam's entire mess. He became the substitute Adam, standing in for our race before God. By being born here, he reconnected the race back into God's family, with all the rights of a family member. Matthew 1:23 "The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel" --which means, "God with us." He also lived a perfect life thereby providing a criminal free record. 2 Corinthians 5:21 "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." Then he died on the cross by crucifixion, to pay the penalty for the sins of mankind. 2 Corinthians 5:14 "For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died." Then he came alive again so that we could live forever. 1 Corinthians15:21 "For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive." Finally Jesus returned to Heaven to be with his father, God, so that we could regain access to God. Ephesians 2:6 "And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus".

Quite simply, Jesus, as the new representative man, did all the things required of man which man cannot do, to the extent that God now accepts that all mankind has done these things and justice is satisfied. This means that when Jesus joined our race, we joined his, when He lived a good life, we all did too, when he died to pay for sin, so did we, when he rose to eternal life, we did and where he dwells before God, so do we. All that he did is credited to us, just as if we had done it. This process is the exact reverse of what happened to us when Adam gave away everything. Notice that we had nothing to do with either process. The only part we have to play is to admit and accept that they both did those things to us and for us. We must accept and believe that Adam did what he did and that it was done for all of us which makes us absolutely lost sinners, without hope. This is called repentance - our acknowledgement that all we have is a long list of needs and no hope. Without this repentance, Jesus is only a good idea, not a way from death to life. Next we must accept and believe that Jesus did what he did and that it was done for all of us. If I do not believe in what he did for us then I can have no part in all those gifts, and, as far as I am concerned, his effort was wasted. Acts 4:12 "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved." It is also important to believe that he did it for all of us, otherwise I can have no water-tight assurance that I personally was included in the deal.

You must understand that everything Jesus did for us is counted or reckoned as ours, only. We have all these things in Jesus our substitute, but not in ourselves, yet. The secret of living the Christian life is to live as though we believed these things to be true, to count them as true, just like God does. The Bible calls this faith, 2 Corinthians 5:7 "We live by faith, not by sight." To a well practiced Christian this becomes so real as to be really real. Colossians 3:1-4 "Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory." Live as though you are dead to sin. Live as though you are already in Heaven.

Now let's go back to the garden. Ever since Jesus came and did what he did, all the effects of Adam's stupidity have been reversed; but there is one thing we must do and that is to believe it. Because of Jesus' success we are put back on the same mat as Eve. We are faced with the choice she faced, to believe God, or not to believe him. People find many excuses why not to believe what Jesus did and many still doubt God, just like Eve, and choose not to believe him. That is their choice, but if you will accept that Jesus was who he was, and did what he did, then the whole package is yours, no kidding.

What next

At this point Jesus requires that you must talk to God and tell him of your decision. You must tell him that you are sorry for the way you have lived and for being a sinner and that you now accept Jesus as your substitute who has died for your sins and paid for them, that he has made you God's child again, given you a clean life record, given you eternal life and now stands before God as your worthy representative at all times, giving you the right to talk to God whenever you wish. That's why, when Christians pray to God, they always say "in Jesus name." Because they accept that the only way we sinners have a right to approach God is through our substitute or representative, Jesus Christ.

The next part of becoming a Christian is that you must announce this arrangement publicly in a ceremony called baptism. This is much like getting married which requires a witnessed ceremony for the record. So Jesus said in Matthew 28:19 "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." Baptism is a ceremony where a Christian minister lowers you under water and pulls you up again. It's a near drowning which doesn't drown, to show that you have been rescued, because someone else has died for you. This is a once off ceremony to declare that you have entered the Christian faith.

There is only one other ceremony which Jesus asked of Christians. This one is repeated because it shows that you are continuing in the faith. Believers gather together and eat a tiny piece of bread and a nip of wine to signify that they believe Jesus is their only way to be accepted by God. The bread represents Jesus' body which was God's medium for getting back down to this isolated race and the wine represents his blood, which blood represents his life given as payment for our lives.

A warning

I have outlined the very simple process of obtaining eternal life and becoming a Christian by believing in Jesus Christ. Sadly, I have to warn you that many Christians and Christian teachers believe that simply believing is not enough to be saved. Depending on which denomination you are listening to, you will hear of many other requirements which people believe should be required of believers before they can be saved. Many of these requirements are necessary for Christians to do to maintain and to grow their new Christian life, but as you will notice from those many texts I gave you, they are simply not required for salvation. This differentiation is important, because your assurance that you are saved becomes increasingly doubtful as more other requirements are thrown in with it. If, on the other hand, your assurance lies in the one simple act of believing, it will be a lot more assuring to you later on, when the going gets tough.

Here are some of the other things you will hear people say.

You cannot be saved unless you; confess all your sins, stop committing sins, are born again, go to church, have a close experience with Jesus Christ, get Jesus in your heart, read your Bible, pray and on it goes.

Believe me, the list is endless. None of those things are bad, they are all necessary to living a good Christian life, but they are not required for you to receive eternal life. That is the reason why I quoted so many Bible references at the beginning. If all those texts are not enough to convince you of the simplicity of salvation, then I don't know what will be.  Changing your life is not a condition of salvation; come to Jesus just as you are.  As we will find out later, He will do the changing, because He is the only one who can do the changing.

Failure to accept those texts in their simplicity can also lead to another error. Some people believe that when we believe, we become saved forever and no one or nothing can lose us our salvation. Read those texts again. They outline a simple condition for being saved; to believe on Jesus. If the condition is not met, then we are not saved. If we can break that condition by failing to believe later on, yet still be saved, then the requirement to believe ceases to be the condition; and we have denied all those texts.

There is one point which must be firmly established at this stage if you are to remain a successful Christian. As long as you hold on to your faith in Jesus Christ, nothing in Heaven or earth can rob you of everything you have in him. After Christians become Christians they do many things. They live better lives and try to be useful and helpful. They also still do wrong things and sin sometimes but as long as they retain their faith, nothing can rob them of what they have. The best scripture (Bible passage) I can think of to illustrate this point is where Paul is writing in 1 Corinthians 3:10-15. "But each one should be careful how he builds. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man's work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames." This means that if a person becomes a Christian but still lives a useless Christian life, doing things which are only fit to burn, as long as he retains his faith in Jesus, he will still be saved. We'll deal with the other building materials later. Jesus also says in Mark 3:28 "I tell you the truth all the sins and blasphemies of men will be forgiven them. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin." Rejecting the Holy Spirit is rejecting the only way God has of keeping your faith alive. But apart from that, I think you can see the bottom line.

I emphasise this point, because all sorts of temptations will plague your mind, many times, to convince you that you are no good - too bad for God to save. That isn't possible, no one is too bad. I have spent some time with this problem because it is absolutely essential that you be convinced that your security and assurance do not lie in yourself but in Jesus Christ. Until you are convinced on this point, you haven't reached first base, never mind the rest. I know, because I have been there. I spent the first half of my life trying to please God and be good enough to save. Believe me, it's hell on earth.

We have an enemy and misery likes company.  He cannot stand to see us getting on with his enemy, God.  So he will do all he can to destroy our faith and drag us away from our eternal inheritance.

Here is what you do.  Practice living in the sunshine of God's forgiving love. Thank Him for it every day. Practice thinking that this is not all there is to life, that there is another glorious life stretching away out ahead of you. Which brings us to the next great issue; how to hang on to our eternal life.

There are several tricks which are very necessary to keeping hold of this gift which belongs to us.  And remember, if we lose it, we will lose all of the gifts; we will have nothing left, nothing at all.

The Bible

The first trick to keeping your belief alive is to read the Bible; but there are certain warnings you need to be aware of and certain instructions which will help.  The first and best way to approach this book is to just read it.  (Later on, you will learn how to study it.)  The Bible is a collection of books, articles and letters.  It is divided into two sections, the Old Testament and the New Testament.  The first section covers world history from the creation of the world up to about four hundred years before Christ.  The New Testament covers the time of Christ and up to about the first 100 years AD. 

My best suggestion is to read the first nine chapters of the first book, Genesis; then start reading the New Testament from the beginning, before going back to read the rest of the Old Testament.  The last book of the New Testament will prove difficult to understand, (many Bible scholars still argue about it) and it is certainly not necessary at a beginners level.  The greatest book of the whole Bible is the gospel of John, the fourth book of the New Testament, this is because it is the most spiritual book and contains most of the great teachings of Jesus Christ.  Here are a few rules to keep you safe from misunderstandings which can be dangerous to your spiritual health. 

One   If you don’t understand a passage, don’t worry.  God wrote the book through men and one day he will explain it to you, or he will direct you to others who may be able to help.  Just keep reading.  I have a saying; “In the jigsaw of truth, do not force the pieces, with patience and prayer, and over time, the segments will slip into place.”

Two   Never read a text in isolation from the passage around it.  Reading the surrounding context of a text always keeps our conclusions in balance and helps us to keep the author’s ideas in mind.  Many people have arrived at dangerous conclusions by not following this rule. Some of the Bible references I will give you will only indicate the chapter.  This will encourage you to notice the context and judge for yourself. 

Three   Never base a doctrine or belief on one text.  Always look to several references before formulating important interpretations of scripture.  Many people and even whole denominations of Christians have gone off the rails by neglecting this rule.

Four   Finally, learn to discern between the differences of the Old Covenant and the New Covenant.  Let me explain.  After chapter eleven of Genesis, almost the whole of the rest of the Old Testament is devoted to the history of a special race of people called Israel or the Jews.  You will know of them.  God intended them to hold his truth together on the earth until Jesus came, and to provide a place and a people for him to enter into at his arrival.  God made a covenant with these people which required many things for them to do in order to retain their place as his special race.  When Jesus came, he formed a New Covenant with humans which was for everyone; it was not based on a privileged race any more.  This new agreement which is for you and I, was not set up until Jesus died on the cross.

This means that all the peculiar rules and laws which applied only to the Jews, remained binding right up till Jesus died.  Which in turn means that Jesus lived under those old rules, like any other Jew, while at the same time, trying to educate everyone about the new conditions to come.  So some discernment is needed when reading Jesus to decide whether he was talking to the Jews of his day or talking to the Christians who would form his church after he left.  This duality applies to the first four books called the four gospels.  All the other books from “Acts of the Apostles” on, are decidedly New Covenant and, indeed, plenty of their content is about clarifying the differences between the two dispensations.  The apostle Paul warns about the problem of making the Old Covenant rules still binding for Christians.  Sadly his warnings still miss the mark today.  Many Christians and even whole denominations, argue with other Christians over which Old Covenant rules should be kept and which should be ignored.

The Old Testament writings are full of wise counsel and reveal tremendous detail about what God is like and how he deals with people, so they are very useful for Christians to read and profit from.  They do have a very real purpose in pointing us toward Jesus and you will come to see this as you progress in understanding.

Having said all that, I must also say that there is not one Christian denomination or fellowship group which does not still retain some elements of the Old Covenant rules.  Nothing human is perfect and we will never find the perfect human group; but these people are our fellow believers and we must accept them as such and learn to get on.  Our differences don’t matter; let us concentrate on our agreements and what we all have in Jesus Christ.  Now let me again remind you that you will need to keep reading the Bible to keep your belief in Jesus intact. 

There are actually plenty of aids to keeping our faith alive, and you will learn of these as you go along.  Reading other Christian books which deal with the problems we might be facing on our part of the journey, can be very useful too.  Keep yourself surrounded by Christian influences, because there are an awful lot of other influences which are hell bent on pulling us some other way.  Collect Christian music, listen to Christian radio or TV stations or any other aids which become available.

Now for the next aid to keeping your birthright.

Prayer

Prayer is simply communicating with God.  Although we cannot see him, the Bible certainly makes it very clear that he can see us and hear us, yes, even to reading our minds.  So our praying can be in the form of either talking out loud to him or talking to him only in our minds.  Most people are familiar with this type of communication, but prayer is really intended to be more than that.  The best prayer is where we remain silent and still in his presence, while the Holy Spirit does our praying for us.  Another quality of good prayer is that we can hold these conversations with God no matter where we are or what we are doing and through most of the day.

The other side of prayer is when he talks to us.  Some people actually hear his voice talking while at other times he simply plants ideas and messages into our minds or spirits.  These deeper forms of prayer take more work to develop and take some time to achieve.  I will be dealing with them later on.  One thing is for sure, frequent conversing with God is essential to keeping us safe and to growing our Christian faith.  You will read all about it as you read the Bible.

 Fellowship

The third great assistance in holding on to your eternal life, is fellowship with fellow believers.  Now the first thing that will enter your mind, will be church; and it is certain that church has been the Christian faith’s greatest attempt at fellowship and getting along regularly to a church will help to keep your faith alive.  But church, as generally conducted, is not the strongest form of fellowship because it is only when arriving and leaving a church, that you have much opportunity to interact with other Christians.

Make friends of other Christians, visit with them, seek their help and seek to help them.  If the church you decide to attend has cell groups, like mini-churches which meet in people’s homes during the week, get along to them.

Obedience

Disobedience to God’s directions will not necessarily cost you your eternal life, but it will stop your progress in growing your life and it will keep Jesus away from leading you.  This leaves you in mortal danger of losing your belief.  You will be standing unprotected on the enemy’s ground and he will look for an opportunity to take away your faith.  As God convicts you of things in your life which He wants to rid you off, let them go.  Most likely the first thing He will bring to your attention will be the problem of not forgiving people who have hurt you.  This is because the first thing He did for you was to forgive you.  Failing to forgive is the fastest way to destroy your saving faith in Jesus Christ and sometime, sooner or later, this effect will happen if you carry on refusing to let it go.

In the Bible, in Matthew 13, Jesus tells the story of a man sowing wheat.  He tells of some of it falling in places where it does grow for a while but adverse circumstances kill it.  This story tells us about the problem of holding on to our faith/belief and what can take it away.  I knew a man who had always been a faithful Christian until he refused to forgive another man who was deliberately hurting his business.  Sometime after that, he walked in to the house and announced that Jesus Christ was no different to Father Xmas and the tooth fairy.  Unforgiveness leads to unbelief which loses us our eternal life.

Conclusion

When Jesus died, He died in the place of every person who has ever lived.  When this happened all the sins of all mankind were forgiven by God, whether they believed it or not.  But although this gift belonged to us all from birth onwards, we still did not automatically receive eternal life.  That could only come to us when we decided to believe the story about Jesus and what He did for us.  Here is where our sins went to.

“And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.”  1John 2:2

“….the man Christ Jesus, 6who gave himself as a ransom for all men…”               1Timothy

“The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”  John 1:29

It is most important to remember where our sins went to and when, because there is a whole industry in the Christian church based on the various concepts of when our sin is taken away.  Some believe it can only be removed after we are dead, that is, if we have lived a good enough life; some believe they can only be removed by doing penances, some believe that we must stop doing the sin first, while others believe a sin must be confessed to God before it can be taken away by His forgiveness.  The truth is, mankind’s sins were taken away at the cross.  We have only one great sin now, and that is the sin of unbelief in Jesus and what He did.  This is the sin which Jesus said the Holy Spirit was sent to the world to convict people about.

 John 18:8 And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: 9of sin, because they do not believe in Me;…”  Since Jesus took away all the sins of the world, the only sin God holds against us is the sin of not believing in Jesus.  When we believe in Jesus, God has nothing against us and we have eternal life.

You may be wondering why I haven’t been approaching Christianity in the conventional style of ranting against sin, telling you to confess your sins and to stop doing them.  This silence is for two reasons.  Firstly,  Jesus has already got rid of all your sin so you can’t get rid of it any better than he can.  Secondly, getting sinful behaviours and addictions out of your life is called repentance, a word which means more than being sorry, it means stopping the behaviour and changing to a different behaviour.  Sadly, unless God performed a miracle at your conversion and broke off certain addictions, it is next to impossible for you to do this by yourself.  It is on the next page, “Why Live”, that I will give you the pointers for finding out your problems and for overcoming them.

This page has been devoted to finding out how to get to live forever and how to hold on to that great gift of eternal life, so that you do not lose it.  But there is much more to the Christian faith than grasping and retaining this great gift of God.  There is another parcel of four gifts which needs for us to open.  These four gifts take Christianity to another level.  They open up incredible opportunities and possibilities which I am aching to tell you about, because having only come to appreciate them myself in my later life, I am most anxious that other new Christians should not need to wait so long to realise them.

So now click on to the next page about how to live a Christian life.  www.lifewhy.org/page3.html