“But I fear, lest
by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds
should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.” – 2 Corinthians
11:3
Sometimes, the simplicity of the gospel can be shocking. Salvation is not a twelve step process, or a
business plan. It is not a four week
course or a weekend retreat. There is
just something about people, something in us, we want “do” something. By that I mean, we want it to be something
that “we do,” and not God. We want it to
lead back to our merits and abilities, and not His. The salvation that Jesus brings is a simple
salvation, but it’s not about your gifts or talents. It is his gift, it is grace, and it is
unmerited. We do not obtain it by
accomplishment, but by yielding.
In South Georgia there is this natural wonder, if you will,
known to those down here as a blue hole or blue spring. It is what it sounds like, a hole in the
earth that is blue; why is it blue?
That’s a good question, it is blue because the spring water that shoots
out of it is so pure and clear that it actually fills up the hole in the ground
and causes it to appear blue. The
interesting part about these blue springs is that no matter where you find them
you can always count on two things.
First, the water that comes out of it will be different than the river
or creek water around it. It will not be
brown, or green, it will not have the same temperature or the same
pollution. The current that comes from
the water springing out of the ground protects the blue spring from
impurities. The second thing, is that
they are lasting and generational. An
eighty year old native of South Georgia can tell you about a blue hole that he
hasn’t been to since he was a kid. You
can then go visit it and it will look exactly the same as he said it did years
and years ago. The blue holes that
populate the South are attractive, scenic, and alluring. They draw people to them because they are
different and enduring. They are the way
they are not because of merit, action, or initiative, but because God made them
that way. The scripture tells us that
the devil would corrupt us from the simplicity that is in Christ. When we are in sin, the last thing the devil
wants us to realize is that we are in sin.
He wants you to think that you have a broken marriage that YOU have to
fix. He wants you to think that you have
an addiction that YOU have to beat. He
wants you to think YOU are rich, famous, intelligent, popular; whatever you
have to be so you don’t realize that you are not serving God and you are
serving yourself. When you realize that
you are lost in sin, it’s only a short hop until you recognize that you can be
found. When you accept that you are
disobeying God, then it’s only a matter of time before you can understand how
to obey him. When you realize you are
lost, and that you need a Savior, and guess what: it isn’t you that is when the
simplicity of the gospel can take hold and you can find salvation. It is not your plan, your process, your merit
or your accomplishments that will bring you salvation. No, it is only yielding; totaling yielding
your heart and life over to the Creator so that he can make your heart anew. By simply yielding your all over to God, we can
be one with Jesus Christ; this simplicity can be shocking to a ME first
mentality.
The scripture tells us that out of the heart are all the issues
of life. When God has your heart, he has
you. He has your check book, your
marriage, your job, your family; he has everything. God wants to change your heart into a blue
spring. A spring of righteousness that
continually flows from within to the world that is without. This is the salvation that Jesus brings. You will not be affected by the polluted world
around you, but you will affect it. You
will not wavier with the changing trends, but you will be steadfast. Out of your heart will flow a continual
current of righteousness that will keep you from sin as you keep yourself with
God. This will be lasting and
generational, because it’s Jesus, its holiness, and he is the same yesterday,
today, and forever. This is the
simplicity that is in Christ.
