By: Mike Kelly
Retired Pastor
I am going through a time with an old friend who is stuck in a theological conundrum. He genuinely wants to be right in his theological understanding of some issues, but they seem to be opposites of each other.
Leaving him confused and a little angry because he believes both things to be true. His issues are our salvation by grace and the consequences of the sin of divorce.
He believes to the bottom of his toes that we are saved by God’s grace upon confession of faith in Jesus and repentance of our sins.
He knows without a doubt that God’s grace saves us from the consequences of sin, all sin. He knows that John 14:6 tells us that Jesus is the only way to heaven “Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”’
And coming through Jesus is based on our faith and relationship with him and not how we live or our good works or even our sins.
At the same time, some “scholars” have convinced him that if one divorces, they cannot remarry without forfeiting their eternal souls. Divorce is sin and he has been taught that it has no exceptions in Scripture so when one divorces, they are committing a sin of such magnitude that God’s grace is not sufficient.
The only way I see that these can both be true is if we believe that we can lose our salvation by the kind of sin we commit. But that’s not Biblical.
One of his “proof” scriptures is 1 Cor 6:9-10 which reads “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.”
So, I can take this to mean that even if I have given my life to Christ with all my imperfections and sins, I will not have eternal life if I am one of the above-named types of sinners.
But, as with most bad interpretations, the context is key. Read the next verse: v11 “And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”
It doesn’t say that they stopped sinning. It doesn’t say that those who were previously divorced undid those divorces somehow. It simply says that we are sanctified by the blood of Jesus.
Our justification is not in our obedience or lack thereof, but in our relationship with Christ. Not one of us will ever get to the place of perfection while in these bodies.
We will all die still sinning and as sinners but we who are Believers will die and go to our reward in Heaven while those who have refused to believe will die and go to their “reward” in Hell.
It’s not about sin, it’s about the choice to believe or not. John 3:18 “Whoever believes in him (Jesus) is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”
My friend reminds me of the illustration of the man standing with a foot in 2 boats….he eventually will get wet. He can’t have it both ways.
He needs to come to understand that heaven is based on what we do or it is based on what Christ did. It can’t be both. By the way, pick choice #2. We’ll never be good enough to earn our way into heaven.
But the good news is that we’ll never be bad enough to be kept out either. It always comes back to who or what saves us…Jesus or our good works.
Divorce, adultery, fornication, greed, gossip, drunkenness, thievery are all sins but they are not what sends us to Hell.
God wants none of these in his children but he doesn’t disown those who do these things (but He does discipline them). When He judges the living and the dead, the question won’t be how good you were, the question will: “be who is your father and brother?”.
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Mike Kelly is the founding pastor of Bryan’s Grace Community Church (retired) and Board Chairman of Bryan’s Sanctuary Homeless Shelter and Williams County’s Compassion (free) Medical Clinic.