God’s offer of eternal life is simple … but it is not easy to believe.
The simple offer of eternal life in the Gospel is that God gives eternal life to anyone who simply believes in Jesus Christ for it.
Simple, right?
But not easy to believe.
It is not easy to believe that God’s free gift of eternal life is by grace from first to last.
True grace is something completely foreign to the way life works or to the way most people think. Humans are unaccustomed to grace. We are told almost from birth that nothing is ever free, that there is always a hidden catch, and that we should always read the fine print.
So when the gospel is presented to us and we are told that eternal life is the absolutely free gift of God to anyone who receives it by faith in Jesus, and that there is nothing we need to do or even can do to earn it or keep it, most people start a get a little suspicious.
They start to look for the fine print.
They start to search for the catch.
The free offer of eternal life seems too good to be true.
So we go looking for the fine print, the footnotes, or the hidden conditions.
Sadly, there are far too many Christians who are more than willing to provide the fine print and explain the catch.
“Oh yes,” they say. “Eternal life is free, but you have to love God in return and obey what He says in Scripture in order to prove you have it.”
Others say, “Well, you need to understand, if you truly are a Christian, your life will have the good works to back up your claim. If you don’t have the good works, then this means you are not truly a Christian.”
Then there is this argument: “Eternal life is free, but before you can receive it, you have to fix up your life, seek after God, repent of your sin, submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, prepare your heart for faith, and pray the sinner’s prayer.”
To all these sorts of teachings, and countless similar ideas, the gospel in Scripture says “No! Eternal life is a free gift of God.”
Eternal life is by God’s grace from first to last.
There are no works needed to gain eternal life, keep eternal life, or prove you have eternal life.
Eternal life does not require you to reform your life, repent of your sin, submit to the Lordship of Jesus, get baptized, seek God, or pray a prayer.
Just receive eternal life as a free gift from God by believing in Jesus for it. That’s it!
It’s that simple … but it’s not easy to believe
This is why the free offer of eternal life is a problem for most people.
It sounds too good to be true.
It sounds too radical.
It sounds like it’s taking grace too far.
Since the gospel of grace is opposite to the way the rest of life works, many people have great trouble accepting it.
So almost without fail, when people first begin to grasp the implications of the freeness of God’s grace in the offer of eternal life—that God gives eternal life to anyone who simply and only believes in Jesus for it—they begin to ask questions.
One of the most frequent questions is this: “So if eternal life is free and all I have to do is believe in Jesus to get it, does this mean I can go sin all I want?”
A man recently posed the question to me this way, “Are you saying that I can believe in Jesus for eternal life, but I can still sleep around, and steal from people, and even murder anyone I want to, but I still get to go to heaven when I die? I don’t have to stop sinning? I don’t have to read the Bible? I don’t have to go to church?”
While many Christians would answer “No” to these questions, my answer is always, “Yes!”
No ifs, ands, or buts.
Without qualification.
Absent of all fine print, footnotes, or hidden conditions.
Yes, I know.
If I say that grace allows you to go sin all you want, you now are beginning to wonder if I am a false teacher who promotes licentious living.
You have probably heard rumors that teachers like me exist, but have rarely (if ever) encountered one in public.
Pastors often preach against “those grace teachers,” but few people have ever really met one.
This is because most so-called “grace teachers” still include a lot of “ifs, ands, or buts” in their teachings about grace. So the true “grace teacher” is viewed as a bit of a legend, sort like leprechauns and elves.
But I have now exposed myself as one of those mythical monsters that people are warned about by their pastors. Even still, you might be thinking I do not mean what I say.
But I do.
Since grace is free, you can go sin all you want.
I will explain this idea more in future blog posts, but if you absolutely must know NOW what I mean, take my course on the gospel. It explains all this (and more) in great detail.
Want to learn more about the gospel? Take my new course, "The Gospel According to Scripture."
The entire course is free for those who join my online Discipleship group here on RedeemingGod.com. I can't wait to see you inside the course!
I really, REALLY want to believe this. But first, I need to be that guy that pulls out the Bible and says “Well, actually…”. Please understand that I’m not totally against this perception of grace, I’m just confused by a couple details.
That section in James is my issue. Where he says good works and a reformed life are evidences of salvation. I agree that grace is limitless, but wouldn’t someone who has been forgiven (and accepted) by grace at least have a strong desire to change the wrong things in their life? Yes, those sins are covered… but still, there’s a sense of needing to change.
Could it be that this desire to reform is God’s Holy Spirit working in that person? That answer doesn’t sit well with me.
Perhaps it’s a sense of obligation we have, sort of a polite gesture. “Oh, I said sorry and You actually forgave me… I guess I should probably try not to do those things.”
I really don’t know. What is this grace that’s been extended to me? It’s just unfathomable… Wow.
Thanks for another great lesson, Jeremy. Love what you do here at Redeeming God.
Yes, I knew there would be LOTS of Bible verses thrown at this post. That’s the trouble with a post like this… Truly, this concept needs to studied over the period of weeks and months together…
Anyway, I think you are referring to James 2. This sermon manuscript here might help a bit … It’s OLD, but I think I still basically agree with what I wrote there.
https://redeeminggod.com/sermons/james/james_2_14-26/
Dear Jeremy: I think in your teaching it would have explained that our spirit only was saved, not our body and soul- we are 3 parts: spirit, body and soul. God is a Spirit and live in a body by His Spirit and will never die or be lost,Do you agree?
There seems to be great tension in this issue of grace and eternal life. We cant earn it, its a free Gift from God because of what Jesus Christ did for us on the cross. The first tension we experience is belief in Christ to receive eternal life. Once we get past this the second tension is…. there must be some rules I must follow to keep it somewhere. As Jeremy has said there are plenty of people out there who will provide them to you. The third tension is trust in Christ. Trusting in the gift of God the Holy Spirit we obtain when we believe in Christ. That trust involves believing we will change as we seek after a relationship with him. There are no rules, no special formula, no pathway and no program to follow. Its relational…….seeking after a vertical relationship with Christ and a horizontal relationships with others.
Its Christ in us as we journey through life. I minister to many people who struggle with grace and eternal life as a gift. Jesus gave it to us with no strings attached. Its us who have an issue with this not God. We unfortunately think its eternal life first… then rules and behaviour (go to church, don’t sin, obey the Pastor and so on). This then becomes evidence that it all must be true, proving each day that its real to ourselves and others through obedience to rules. When simply its freedom through Christ and then its relational.
Love it! That’s exactly right. Rules ruin relationships faster than anything.
If my wife says, “I don’t feel loved,” and I say, “So give me 5 things to do which will help,” and she gives 5 things, she is not going to feel more loved if I start doing those 5 things. She will feel less loved, because she will see that I am just following a list of rules.
Setting aside the small groups (the myrters, the 24, the 144,000) there seem to be two groups of the mass of people in Revelation; one group in white robes who are the guest at the wedding feast and the other group who make up the bride. The bride would be those who chose to follow Jesus as well as believe in him and the guests would be those who only believed. Both groups are sinners but the one tries to do good instead of evil, even as they fail.
I believe we will be shocked to see some of the people in the crowd (assuming we could even recognize them, which I doubt).
True. We will be quite shocked at who is there and who is not.
The words of Jesus of Jesus in Matt 7:22 as well. The works of the “goats” were not sinful works, but were really good works, like casting out demons and performing miracles! Who of us can claim that?
So thankfully, it’s not about good works, but about faith alone in Jesus Christ alone.
From what I can gleam from what Jeremy is saying, he is trying show us what eternal life through Christ looks like through Gods eyes not ours. We can see it through the lens of what we have been taught. In my view we must see it through the Lens of Christ to be able to understand it. Grace does not sit well in our world, so we must add conditions to make it fit ie rules, programs, pathways, go to church, obedience to pastors, study the bible etc. All evidence of grace and eternal life so we say. Not so…. its from God he has decided its free with no conditions, we believe in Jesus to obtain it. Then its relational with Jesus and us.
Yes, the post wasn’t as clear as I hoped, but oh well… Thanks for help clarifying a bit.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones said: “There is no better test as to whether a man is really preaching the New Testament gospel of salvation than this, that some people might misunderstand it and misinterpret it to mean that it really amounts to this, that because you are saved by grace alone it does not matter at all what you do; you can go on sinning as much as you like because it will redound all the more to the glory of grace. That is a very good test of gospel preaching. If my preaching and presentation of the gospel of salvation does not expose it to that misunderstanding, then it is not the gospel.”
I think this is a summary of what you said above, Jeremy.
I also want to add that the New Covenant was a unilateral covenant – it was not made between God and man – it was between God the Father and God the Son. Nothing we do, or don’t do, can can ever cut us off from God’s love. (Heb 7:20-22)
Right! You can know whether or not you are teaching grace by whether or not someone accuses you of teaching that you can just go sin all you want.
That accusation is sort of a litmus test for the gospel.
https://redeeminggod.com/romans-6-1-grace/
Thanks, Jeremy, I appreciate your comments. You have helped to strengthen and reinforce what I believe about God’s goodness and love.
Actually the new covenant from Jesus is not unilateral. If it was unilateral God would give eternal life to everybody, no matter what our WILL is. According to what I hear from Geremy about the principle of grace instead, the ones who have faith in Jesus that they will receive eternal life, will receive it, the others will not. It is an unconditional offer, but it is still an offer, that needs to be accepted.
That arises another problem though: a person can be a good person and still not believe in Jesus and in his gift of eternal life. There are a lot of people like this. People who do not believe that God exist, people who believe in other religions. Will these people not be saved and have eternal life? What about all the people that were born before Jesus came? And all the people who have never heard the gospel and the offer of eternal life?
I am sure you Geremy in your ministry have come across these questions and I would like to hear your tought.
Thanks for your perspective.
How do you answer these scriptures?
For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil 2:9-11, NAS).
It is written: As surely as I live, says the Lord, every knee will bow before me; every tongue will acknowledge God (Rom 14:11, NIV).
I have sworn by my own name; I have spoken the truth, and I will never go back on my word: Every knee will bend to me, and every tongue will confess allegiance to me (Isa 45:23, NLT).
Hi Nizam,
I wonder where Jesus’ humbleness has gone in these verses…I do not recognize him…
To be honest about those verses, I have to say something that will sound like a heresy. I am not a pastor, so I reserve myself the right to say heresies 🙂
Actually those words sound to me like the adversary’s words. Satan is the one who wants to be worshipped, exalted, glorified, have his name above all others, have everybody make allegiance to him, everybody kneeling down to him.
He even betrays himself by saying that he has sworn by his name that every one will bend his knees to him:
Jesus has taught us not to swear, that swearing is of the devil: James 5:12 “But before all things, my brothers, do not swear, neither by heaven, nor the earth, nor any other oath. But let your “Yes” be yes, and the “No,” no, so that you might not fall under judgment.”
I know that the adversary is planning to fake Jesus’ coming, so these words sound really like the preparation of our mind for his coming, making us believe that it will be the real Jesus. His plan is quite elaborate, and fits perfectly with the words in those verses. I am not referring to the coming of the antichrist, that many people are warning about, but to what will come AFTER, so that “even the elects may fall in it, if possible”. The antichrist is a deception mostly for non believers in the bible. The coming that will come after the antichrist, the so called “millenial christ” will be the deception for the bible believers, the Christians, the ones that Satan so hates and will be delighted to deceive receiving their worship by taking the place of Jesus. Actually “millenian christ” is the name I gave it, since nobody is warning that the one coming to rule on Earth for supposedly 1000 years will be another fake, probably Satan himself.
Basically the adversary’s plan is to perform the famous end times judgement: an enourmous destruction (earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, asteroids) as if it was the judgement from God, to stop all wars, after which he will appear as if he was Jesus the saviour. I bet most people will really bend their knees to him after that. “Every tongue will acknowledge God”. Of course they will, who will deny that something supernatural happened after all that destruction and the previous preparation to it ? Apart all the centuries long preparation of our minds to expect something like that to happen, the first move from the adversary to make us believe that the punishment is coming from God, in fact will be in the form of a warning: everybody will live a paranormal inner experience: all will see their lives like before dying, and all their sins, and will feel the horrible sensation of the total absence of God. Some people will commit suicide after experiencing something so unbearable. Shortly after that will come a miracle to prove that the warning was from God and Jesus, a supernatural external phenomenon, probably a cross in the sky. Of course the warning means “repent, before it’s too late.” It is particularly addressed to war makers. Without going into details wars will not stop, they are directed by the same ones that are serving to fulfill this deception plan, so the adversary will have the excuse to cast his judgment to save us from the war. “As surely as I live, says the Lord, every knee will bow before me”.
What I mentioned has been given as prophecy through the centuries, the last time as the Garabandal prophecy, by the “Virgin Mary” to a few children in Spain around 1960. Of course the “Virgin Mary” does not say that that is Satan’s plan, but God’s plan. But you know that the “Virgin Mary” apparitions are from Satan.
I am not basing myself only on that prophecy, there are many many other elements that support the idea of that plan.
I am preparing material to expose everything I have found out, but not until I have completely cleared my doubts about what our real Jesus will do. Will he give eternal life to everybody? Will he separate the wheat from the shaft (I suppose so)? And so who will be the saved ones? What will be the dividing line? When will he come? Will he wait until the “millenial christ” will have manifested and killed everybody? Will the “millenial christ” kill everybody at the end, is it that his final purpose, after beeing worshipped?
I hope in a nice surprise from Jesus. I do not feel like going through all that…
As you may have realized, I am not the kind of person that believes that the bible is all inspired by God, there are parts that have been manipulated. More diplomatic believers say that we need to understand correctly those parts that seem to contradict each other…I am not so diplomatic…to me something manipulated is something manipulated 🙂
But as I said I am not a pastor, so take what I said just as a humble personal view of a believer.
I am pretty sure Jesus does not want anybody to bend their knees to him, we are his friends, not his worshippers.
The practice of bending one’s knees to authorities and gods must be of pagan origin, it is based on superiority and inferiority concepts. Those who worship power love that people bend their knees to them.
Jesus would have said something different “everybody will realize the truth and accept me”.
But even then it cannot be everybody, because what will Jesus do to make people change their mind apart from what he has already done? Only a forceful action based on deception like that of Satan can induce people to change their mind.
It seems implied that the 1000 years of rulership will serve to have everybody come to worship him. But if i was Jesus’ rulership why leave and come back 2000 years later, then? Start your rulership straight away after the resurrection.
My perception of Jesus is that he does not really want to push anything, neither rule: if he wanted everybody to believe in him he would have appeared to EVERYBODY after his resurrection. Instead, he appeared only to those who previously believed in Him. It’s all about faith, recognize the truth in one’s heart, without external proof. The response of our heart is our true connection to whom created us.
It’s impossibile for Jesus to rule on this Earth: the rulers of this world will not repent. The only way that they repent is that they pretend to do it. That is the show that is awaiting us: when the fake saviour comes all these government chiefs, military heads, bankers will bow their knees to the one who apparently stripped them of their power by a bigger power; their power of devastation through war overcome by the more powerful power of devastation through “natural” disasters. It’s all about a demostration of power. Is that Jesus’ and our Father’s way?
Think how childish would be the plan of Jesus if it really came from him: after his resurrection Jesus leaves because the rulers don’t believe him, but he cast his swear: I swear on my name that when I come back all will believe me, all will bow their knee to me. How? Through a devastating power and an iron rod of rulership afterwords.
“And I will send you a deception because you have not believed the truth when I told you”.
Seems the plan and the words of a person full of wish of revenge. Words that have been put in the mouth of Jesus but I cannot believe he really said them, they rather serve the adversary’s plan to take his place at the second coming.
Certainly Satan would have reacted in that revengful way if he had been rejected like Jesus had.
But Jesus is love.
Anna, thanks for the “education”.
Grace is free but is receiving and believing a work?
Nope!
Ha,wha? Having come to believed in Jesus back in the 70s as I hitchhiked the country instead of graduating high school . I can recall how joyful and filled with adoration I felt at first by the Grace of God through faith…Years since Life, Church,doctrines, teachings, the world ,age has terribly worn me down to a snail crawl a bare spark publicly…. I inwardly believe quietly still, flaring up when fanned …trudging aside the direction of the time….listening, watching,shaking my head with more tears of grief than joy( some of that are my own tragedies). Not much dancing ,the inner music is muffled in all the religious and worldly clamor.. But today! I sat up in my chair… I commend you . I’ve known that!When you affirmed Eternal life does not require you to reform your life, repent of your sin, submit to the Lordship of Jesus, get baptized, seek God, or pray a prayer… Thats what I thought I heard so long ago .I am glad to hear it. Not without wisdom,for in believing we expose our true self naked ,finding it difficult or impossible to hide ,should we step up, standing alone, up front centered, in the light of this loving redeeming present God who sees us behind our eyes. I have been paying attention for a while, so nonconforming truth teaching vs religious systems isnt new, not all is even digestible. Being transformed in mind effectively in the roar of the flow is daunting while still in the camp. Not to make up our own religious interpretation in a world that loves a definition, raises another temptation.I am glad for your view all the same,”Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.”
And Nancy, thank you for your encouragement here. Yes, the offer of eternal life is simple for those who come to see their need of grace, just as you did. Even children can understand it! But for people who want to contribute their own good works and prove their worth to God and pull themselves up by their own spiritual bootstraps, the gospel is not easy to believe. Glad you saw this so many years ago!
You say it’s ok to sin but than why agree that repentance is turning from sin in this article? – https://redeeminggod.com/sermons/miscellaneous/what-is-repentance/
I’m going to take this one step further. Jesus healed people and raised people from the dead. We think we have to die and live eternally in heaven. That’s a Greek teaching by Plato. Are we 100% sure that our definition of eternal life is correct and Jesus wasn’t talking about immortality??? Or better understood as not dying.
I’m not quite sure what you’re asking here. I agree that eternal life is not the same thing as living in heaven for eternity. But people with eternal life still do die … but once they are raised from the dead, they will live in immortal bodies (1 Cor 15:42, 53).
You’re not actually thinking logically. The ancient hebrew people never believed in heaven. The idea of dying and going to heaven was brought to Jerusalem by hellenization. That concept of dying to go be with god was started by Plato. It was never hebraic. If you really believe people are meant to die then jesus didnt do anything to fix the curse of adam, God is moronic to put people on earth when he wants them in heaven, and jesus himself worked against god when he healed people in the prevention of death and also brought people back to life. Besides that if you really believe god wants you in heaven with him why does all of certain strive to live?? By your logic life on earth is bad because life in heaven is immortality. You should die asap instead of living according to your logic.
Furthermore, jesus was not telling the truth when he commanded disciples to raise the dead according to your logic. If the ressurrected bodies are future tense then god made crappy bodies to begin with and jesus worked against god’s ultimate plan of new and better evolved bodies when he healed and raised people from the dead 2000 years ago.
Satan is the one responsible to make our bodies crappy, after their initial perfection. The curse of death does not come from God but from Satan, who played the double part God/serpent with Adam and Eve. Death is not the consequence of disobeying God, but a deliberate act of evil from Satan who set a rule pretending to be God (do not eat that fruit) and then induced them to disobey and eat it. Then he played the part of God offended and angry with them, for their disobedience and cast his curse on all of manking and all of creation, pretending it was Adam and Eve’s fault. The concept of sin is an invention of Satan, sin means something that offends God. Our real Father is never offended by anything we do. And he does not retaliate when we do things we should not. Law (rules)/sin/wrath is the system set by Satan as his counterfeit of God, his way of playing at beeing God with us, without us never really know who our real Father his and how He behaves (until Jesus came).
There are strong indications that the fruit Satan induced Adam and Eve to eat was an allucinogen mushroom (not an apple). There are medieval paintings with this kind of mushroom: amanita muscaria, the fairy tales’ red mushroom with white dots. This served to open a portal for Satan into Adam and Eve bodies. Since the beginning of human history, in all religions they have been using drugs to get in touch with the divine, with God. What they did not know is that this way they do not get in touch with God but with the fallen angels who dwell in the astral realm, their prison dimension. Fallen angels have pretended to be God/Gods since the beginning. And humans have believed them. Incense too also helps to make that connection. The drug was also absorbed through the skin, they mixed it with some oil to that purpose. That’s where the word “anointed” comes from.
Satan must have managed to sabotage the perfect and immortal Adam and Eve’s DNA and make it defective, so that at a certain moment cells do not reproduce anymore and the body starts to get old, until death. Death of the body also means death of the soul, because the soul is the the breath of God that make our bodies alive, it is not a separate entity that float away when we die, it just disappears. What Jesus will do when resurrecting our bodies will be to reinject the breath of God into them. We do not exist separate from our bodies.
At the beginning the loss was not as much as it is now: 900 years is reported as the age before the flood. The flood gave another struck to our bodies. And that again is Satan’s doing, not God’s. Satan is an angel of fire and dwell in the interior of the Earth where magma abounds. He has certain control above natural elements. So he managed to push magma up to the crust of the Earth and break it, giving birth to volcanic eruptions. Since then we have, besides eruptions, earthquakes, and the continental drift. The eruptions heat the water and made it level rise. They also hit the canopy of water that was protecting the Earth’s atmosfere around the Earth, in the form of a myst, and made it rain down on Earth for 40 days, hence the flood. Eruptions also caused the poles to get covered with ice, there are fossils of mammoth with still fresh grass in their stomach.
Before the flood the Earth was still a paradise, with no earthquakes, no bad weather (no rain, no thunders, no hurricanes, no draghts, etc.), and the same temperature everywhere.
The lost of the protection of the canopy made our bodies vulnerable to the sun’s ultra-violet rays and maybe other rays, which shortened our life span to 70 years and have caused since then genetic diseases and abnormalities.
With all this information in mind you can now draw your conclusions about why our bodies still die even though we have been given eternal life by Jesus. Eternal life yes means immortal bodies, we do not have other life outside our bodies.
It will take to make all things new again (new earth new heaven) to restore the conditions for us to have immortal bodies again.
What Jesus achieved with his first coming was to gain the right from Satan to give us eternal life back. He had to abide to Satan’s rules (sinlessness) in order first to be able to resurrect he himself, and from there extend the gift to all of us, because as Satan cursed all of us with death because of the sin of one man (Adam), so Jesus gained the right (in the battle with Satan) to be one man to give eternal life to all.
That is a promise, which is not accomplished yet. He gave us a taste of it by resurrecting some people, but we will need his second coming to have the promise fullfilled. That’s why in the meanwhile we still die.
We need to be careful about blaming health problems and sickness on satan. Let us not give him more credit than he deserves, or power than what he has.
Jeremy is correct. Satan was defeated by Christ on the cross and his power was disarmed. Deception and lies are his weapons today. Unfortunately we live in a fallen world still so ill health comes from….just name a few causes, virus, bacteria, poor diet, lack of exercise, neglect, abuse and hunger etc.
yes, excellent examples of the problems that have entered into the world due to sin. And even these things will be removed and done away with in the new heavens and new earth.
New heavens and new earth. Is this perhaps a reference to future planetary travel. Our quest to live on other planets. Essiently, being in effect. A new earth with a new heaven eg. Different atmosphere. This is where we have to appreciate that we must live for each day. As absolutely none of us have the faintest idea of what is ahead. Mankind is only as wise as the day after. But appreciative of the day before. Creation and kingdom are the whole. Life,s exciting! Even when it, s not! Because we are not the creators. We are the created. And I, m happy with my lot and part to play. This is the day the Lord has made. Rejoice and be glad in it. Rejoice ehhhh!? That’s a broad spectrum word in this piece of scripture. Life,s sweeeeeeeet! Amen amen.
That old hymn, song. One day at a time sweet jesus. How relative to life is that hymn!!!!!!!!! Hugely relative!!!! Day by day grace. Really!!!! Eternal life is! grace. Grace is! eternal life. And there will be grace in the darkest of places. Because the light overcomes the darkness. Via grace. He is the way, the Truth and the light. He is life. He is grace. He is Jesus. He is God. He is the holy spirit. Day by day by day.
On the subject of death. Am I ready to die!? Yes. I am ready. My body gets older and tired and weary. So yes, I look forward to death. But as I am the created and not the creator I am here for a purpose. Even the purposes I don,t fully see. Each day is well enough to deal with in itself. If I am given grace to build barns in the future, I, ll build barns. Lol. But today. No barns! But hey, actually! Just finished base for my greenhouse!!! Barn enough! Lol
Hi Jeremy. So, what happens if a person rejects this eternal life after they die. Are the dragged kicking and screaming into Heaven when they would prefer to not live life with God and continue to do what they want?