Will God "Foreclose" On Your Salvation?

We see all the headlines in the news today about home foreclosures. People got in over their heads with adjusted-rate mortgages and now can’t afford the upward adjusted mortgage payments.

I once viewed Jesus’ sacrifice as a down payment on salvation. I believed that what Jesus did at the cross made it theoretically possible for me to be saved, at least in principle. Jesus had died to pay the penalty for sin, so my own eternal punishment wasn’t necessarily required – as long as I was able to pass the test and do the rest. I just had to keep up the “mortgage payments” on salvation, so to speak.

I was laboring under the delusion that I could in some way make myself acceptable to a holy, just and righteous God, but the truth was that nothing I did could ever be adequate. Fortunately, God used my experience in legalistic religion to bring me to the realization that there was no hope of salvation if it depended in any way on anything I did. Once I finally realized how bad the bad news was, I was ready to appreciate just how good the Good News is.

The Good News is that Jesus did not just make the down payment on my “adjusted-rate” salvation mortgage. He purchased my salvation in full without a mortgage and gave it all to me as an absolutely free gift.

Once the full force of this truth hit me I found that all my fear about sin punishment after death (a foreclosure on my imagined salvation mortgage) vanished. I now know that whatever happens, I am safe in union with Christ. That doesn’t mean that I won’t ever face hardship or even tribulation of one sort or another. But I have the absolute assurance that my position in union with the indwelling Christ is secure because of the cross of Christ.

The cross was much more than an exemplary object lesson in love. While the cross was most certainly a demonstration of God’s great love, the cross reconciled sinners to God, not by example, but by substitution.

Because Jesus is our substitute, we need not fear that our salvation is based upon our own ability to pass a test or withstand tribulation.

Now that I better understand my place in Christ, I’m no longer trying to make impossible “mortgage payments” on salvation. My fear of the uncertainty of after-death punishment is gone, chased away by the assurance of Christ’s cross. I have nothing to fear but fear itself as President Roosevelt stated during World War II. Why? Because I am safe in the love of Christ.

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