Is Salvation: "Giving Your Life To Christ"?

At first glance, you may wonder how there could be anything at all wrong with the idea of “giving your life to Christ”. After all, it’s repeated from thousands of pulpits.

I propose that salvation is not a matter of you giving your life to Christ. In fact, it has nothing whatsoever to do with what you have given God. Grace revolves around what He has given us, not what we give to Him! You receive eternal life not because you gave your life to Christ. You receive eternal life because He gave you His Life! The distinction might seem subtle, but it’s important.

It is the nature of the religious perspective to focus on what we do instead of what our gracious God has done. Religionists like to think that when they behave in a certain way, God reacts to them.

Now before I go further, let me give you a quick explanation of what I mean when I write about “religion”. I have in mind the system of living by which human beings try to make themselves acceptable to God through their own actions.

I realize that the apostle James used the word positively (see James 1:26-27), but as happens with many words over time, religion has come to mean something very different now than it did in James’ time.

The English word comes from the Latin religare, a word that actually meant “to bind fast” or “restrain”. Originally, religion referred to people being bound together by shared beliefs, or being bound by a particular set of moral obligations.

Today, religion almost universally refers to a set of behavioral standards derived from a person’s religious beliefs. This contemporary use of the word is the kind of religion that I’m criticizing in my observations.

I said before that religious people like to think that they can control God by their actions – that they can make God react to them. However, the truth is that the sovereign God of the universe doesn’t react to man to cause our salvation (or anything else, for that matter). He’s not sitting there on His throne hoping with all His might that we will be so kind as to invite Him into our lives. That’s the kind of religious foolishness I believed for many years (and many believer now).

WE DIDN’T START THE BALL ROLLING REGARDING OUR SALVATION – GOD DID! To suggest otherwise diminishes Him and exalts us.

Salvation is God’s work. Our response to Him is because He initiated the whole thing. We love because He first loved us. Grace means we are merely recipients of what He did through Jesus Christ. He is the initiator, activator and perpetuator of our salvation, from start to finish. We contributed nothing toward our salvation. After all, we had nothing to contribute.

I know you may think you’re a Christian because you made a decision for Christ. I thought that too – for a long time. I decided for Jesus. I asked Him into my life. It sounds noble, doesn’t it? The reality, however, is that nothing could be further from the truth!

Read John 3:16. Read 2 Corinthians 5:19. Read 1 John 4:10. Do you see the consistent theme? It’s not about us. It’s about Him and what He has done because of His love for us. The gospel has nothing to do with mankind reaching up to God to give Him anything. It’s about the Godhead, moved by love, compassion, and mercy, reaching down to us and providing a salvation we could never have accomplished on our own. The Son came to give us salvation. There’s nothing for us to do except believe it and say, “Thank You very much!”

Consider what Paul wrote to the Ephesians: “By grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:8-9).

We don’t deserve, earn or work for salvation. We simply come to experience it through faith. And Paul says that we can’t even take credit for the faith, for it too “is a gift of God” and not something that we work up by our own resolve.

My intention is not to plant doubt in the minds of people who’ve been taught that they became Christians through giving their lives to God. To the contrary, I want you to see that before you ever wanted Him, He wanted you! I suspect that many – if not most – of us didn’t clearly understand all that happened when we began to follow Christ. That’s OK, thought, because He has it all under control. He knows the truth, and we can catch up in our understanding, as we are able.

I wonder if any of us understood how wonderful salvation really is when we first began to follow Jesus. We can be grateful that salvation doesn’t require perfect understanding on our part. God is looking for sincere hearts, not perfect heads. Wrongheadedness on the subject may have caused us to think that becoming a Christian means we give Him our lives, but the reality is just the opposite. HE GIVES US HIS LIFE! That’s a much better arrangement to every way – don’t you agree?

A misunderstanding in this area can keep you from living out your life as intended by your Father. At salvation, Jesus comes to live right within you joined to your human spirit. He will never leave you or forsake you. He has the Life for you to live – just accept it in place of that old flawed human life you were used to.

We are so much better prepared for life when we begin our journey as followers of Christ by giving God all the glory for His work, living humbly and accepting the Life of Christ from within. The bottom line is that we can GIVE Him nothing – even our human lives. GOD GIVES US EVERYTHING! Then our daily lives become a natural extension of the way we began – a true walk of GRACE!