Catholic Devotions!

Salvation Ain't Cheap

Salvation ain't cheap, and let me tell you why. Many churches you go to, people are gonna say, "Jesus died for your sins, so you don't have to do anything to get to Heaven." They tell you Jesus loves you so much and all you gotta do to earn salvation is sit there and be loved by Him. I think that's an outright lie, though we and those who are spreading it are not aware that it might not be true.

This is called being passive in your faith. Going to church and being a good little girl. Sitting in that pew and vibing to the music, believing in your whole heart that Jesus loves you but not doing anything about it. Just trusting that because you're better than the person next to you, you'll get to heaven. It's passive, not active. Salvation ain't cheap.

I'll use that analogy of the perfect little girl sitting next to someone who she believes isn't as faithful as she is. This dude is huge, muscley, definitely a biker, covered head to toe in tattoos, some of which probably shouldn't be seen in a church. You turn your gaze back to the front of the church at the pastor, smoothing down your ironed dress and clicking your sandals together, thinking of that dude's dirty boots he lugged in here getting the carpet all dirty. Surely when both of you die, God would welcome you with open arms and give this man a little extra time in Purgatory to soak out the roughness?

Wrong. Salvation ain't cheap. This man probably turned away from good friends, from family, from the life he'd known to be here. Maybe he's still out there doing some bad sins, but isn't that what Jesus died for? Isn't that what we sit in the pews and mull over every week? "Oh, Jesus died for me and I'm Baptized. So I'm good, I'm all covered."

Wrong again. Salvation isn't cheap. While the girl is being passive in her faith, this man is being active in his faith. Throwing himself aggressively through the walls of Heaven to get to his Savior who died for not just you, but for him, too, for all the sinners. And that's how we all need to be: active and aggressive. We need to be passionate, not passive. We need to barge down the gates of Heaven and force our way through because, as the book of Matthew says, it is easier for someone to force a camel through the eye of a needle than it is to get into Heaven. If we sit around on our butts thinking that we're all good, Jesus handled everything, what does that make us? Warriors for God's coming kingdom? Fighters for our faith? Defenders of biblical justice? I don't think so.

When you get pushed down, God wants you to push back harder. He wants to strengthen you so you can be strong enough to get to Heaven. Converts have stronger faith than anyone: they turned away from the strong desire to sin, from what was wrong and pushed back with hands that became even stronger than the devil. Those of us who were raised in Christian homes sometimes have a hard time realizing how tough we need to be in our faith. When God pushes us down, we need to push back, no matter how metaphorically childlike and weak our hands can seem to be. Because to make it to Heaven, we have to be strong. We have to enter through the narrow gate.

Salvation ain't cheap. It has been paid for with the blood of the Lamb of God. Will we give our blood back to Him, or will we continue to sit in the pew and pass judgment?