If You Receive Jesus

September 15

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,” Galatians 5:22.

How can we distinguish ‘true religion’? How can we identify the belief system that conveys the heart of the Almighty to man? There are so many divergent philosophies that represent lofty thought but are no better than the wind blowing through the trees as regards our temporal well-being and our eternal security. How can we avoid being duped by high sounding words that are as vacuous as the air?

And it’s obvious that many of our species are under the spell of voluminous words whose meanings are not the same as those we embrace to our hearts. Some of us believe that life is a series of attempts at attaining nirvana, that our inability to achieve enlightenment in one lifetime will be followed by another chance to discover the bliss that comes with perfect knowledge in another.

Others of our race are convinced that it is our duty to impose our belief system upon everyone on earth. We are further convinced that we are obligated to utilize any means necessary to achieve this end. We will lie, we will steal, we will murder, all that the eternal purposes of god as--we perceive them-- will become universal in their scope.

Some of us believe that mere adherence to the belief system we espouse will assure our attainment of heaven. In this view, it is not as much what we believe as individuals but what we adhere ourselves to that brings salvation to us. When we fall short of the prescribed dogma of our tenets of faith, we simply acknowledge our failure and rely upon our membership in the group to absolve us from our failures and foibles.

If we subscribe to the born again philosophy of religious expression we base our eternal well-being on the words of Jesus in John 3:3—“Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of Heaven.” This is followed by the explanation in John 3:16 which says, “God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.”

At once this assertion includes everyone yet excludes many who will not subscribe to it. But to we who embrace it, it is anchored in God’s love, which brings us back to Galatians 5:22 which tells us that included among the fruits of the Spirit given as the evidence in Exhibit A of our lives as to whether we are true sons and daughters of the Living God will be the unmistakable proof—we will love.

In fact, in I John 4:8 the beloved Apostle tells us, “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” If we are correct in believing this one truth, we have the essence of salvation. Because God loves, He allowed Jesus to die a cruel death. Because God loves, Jesus forsook His lofty estate in Heaven in order that we may partake of Heaven eternally (see Philippians 2:6-8).

When we receive God’s love as manifested through Christ’s life, death and resurrection, we become partakers eternally of the salvation that is His free gift to us and we become conduits in time of the fruits of the Spirit, including love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness.

To which belief system do you subscribe? Examine your heart to know who you will serve and whose law you will uphold. If you receive the words of Jesus, the Holy Spirit will come to you in your confusion, in your doubt, in your sin, and “teach you all things,” John 14:26.