Question:  Dear Greg,

            John 3:16 is very important to the Christian faith.  All Christians believe that in order to get to heaven you MUST put your life in Christ.  Is that all that is needed to get you to heaven?  We are repeatedly asked to live pure lives, practicing repentance and righteousness.  The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 6:9 that those who are not righteous will not be admitted into His Kingdom.  Does this make acceptance of Christ AND repentance equally vital to our salvation?

            Maria

Answer:  Dear Maria,

            You are confusing the fact that God freely, by his grace, forgives, redeems, justifies and sanctifies us because of Christ, because of the cross—with the life we are empowered to live once we are in Christ, once we are saved by grace.

            In brief, two things happen to those who repent, accept Christ, who believe in him completely, who trust in him solely for their salvation (and this is not easy to do, for we humans like to remain in control, thinking that something we do can affect our salvation).

            Two things

1.      Forgiveness, redemption, justification.  God removes our sin from us.  He cancels the debt of sin.  The slate is wiped clean.  Completely.

2.      Sanctification.  God makes us holy.  Having purified us, now he makes us righteous.  He imputes the righteousness of Jesus Christ to us, not because we are good, but because He is good.  We are called saints in the Bible, not because of our perfection, but because Jesus Christ is perfect, and he lives his life in those who accept him.  We are not now literally perfect of course, for we are still human, still in this body of flesh, still with our sinful human nature.  And so, even though we are saved, even though God counts us as righteous, even though the righteousness of Jesus Christ has been credited to us, we are still sinners (1 John 1:8).

            Your definition of righteousness is correct, and obviously 1 Corinthians 6:9 is correct—the unrighteous will not inherit eternity.  But the issue is how do we humans become righteous?  A lifetime of virtue, chastity, obedience, denial, character-building, etc. will never allow us to be righteous, for just one sin is enough to disqualify us.  We can never become righteous enough to qualify for heaven.  God tells us that we are saved by grace through faith, not by works (Ephesians 2:8-10).  We are not saved BY works, we are saved FOR works (see Ephesians 2:10).  Having saved us, Christ lives his life within us, empowering us to do good works, but even those works are not performed because of who and what we are, but because of who and what God is.

            God does for us what we cannot ever do for ourselves.  We are saved by grace—God gets all of the credit for our salvation, for it was all done (Christ’s saving work on the cross) for us, in spite of us, not because of us.

            In Christ,

            Greg Albrecht