G
ood parents are rare, just as obedient children are rare. This thought is very debatable, for the evil in children is sometimes learned from the evil that is in their parents. But can we be a good parent? I believe there are tons of brilliant ideas concerning good parenthood out there, but I would want to focus on four things.
Free salvation offered by Christ. . ..Christ limits His free-salvation offer only to those who believe in His atoning death on the cross. Some think the formula to live eternally is faith in Christ plus church membership, baptism, and other types of moral duty. Concerning good works, the apostle Paul declared that it is the result, and not the cause of salvation. Doing a charitable endeavor, therefore, such as giving money to feed the poor cannot clean and forgive the guilt of a sinful soul. “I am the door,” taught our Lord Jesus, “if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved.” (John 10:9) We are not the “door” to heaven; Christ is!
There is a kind of pride that’s necessary to maintain one’s sanity and sense of self-respect. An unfortunate but very smart woman married a moneyed but wild man. Her in-laws were cold, always despising her poverty for long years until she lived independently, far away from the deck of her husband’s abundance.
In her lifetime, Gadaria had all the opportunities to know Christ and His offer of free eternal life through faith in His atoning blood. But Gadaria did not seek the face of Christ in a way Mary Magdalene searched and waited for the risen Jesus at His tomb. Gadaria didn’t have the love of the truth; her deception by the devil had strengthened her grip on a false doctrine until her death—a doctrine that the money given to the Church through the priest can buy salvation and eternal life!
The term born again is prone to wild misuse. Its meaning is almost always clothed with mockery. Our Lord Jesus, seeing its future distortion by His enemies, spent eighteen long verses with Nicodemus in John chapter three in order that His teaching concerning man’s salvation through the second birth be made crystal clear.
Saul, who later became Paul, the Apostle, had a heart filled with religious pride before his conversion. He thought of Judaism, the religion of the Jews, as God’s only faith system, which they practiced for thousands of years. There should be no other tenet than that which was given by God to Moses. This conviction has led him to persecute the followers of Christ. His religious pride heightened in toxicity when Saul consented to the death of the first Christian martyr named Stephen. (See Acts 7:58.)