Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.

-Martin Luther 

There is no salvation by osmosis.

We can’t bank on our spouses relationship with Jesus—and the same applies to our mom or anyone else for that matter.  We may have the best pastor in our city—he can’t believe for us.  God makes no provision for riding right on into heaven on someone else’s coattails.  We must trust Christ for ourselves.  The only coattails that can bring each one of us into right-standing with God are those of Jesus Christ and him crucified.  It is the greatest miracle of all—a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ his only Son—is by far unsurpassable.

Nicodemus, the secret seeker I will call him (he did come at night to speak to Jesus after all)—came to Jesus to find out more about the spiritual teachings of Jesus.  Jesus didn’t waste any time with the prestigious and religious man.

 3 Jesus answered him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.’ 4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” 5 Jesus answered, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.’    (John 3:3-5, ESV)

Notice that Jesus didn’t inform him that one of his contemporaries could stand in proxy for him.

You must be born again.

The guy you sit next to at work can’t pass his relationship with God over to you like he might his sandwich he offers to share with you.  Sitting in a garage won’t make you a car.  Hanging out in the locker room of your favorite NFL football team won’t make you a professional football star. 

The prophet Ezekiel faced a people caught up with the notion that somehow they wouldn’t personally be held accountable for their own sin.  They were tossing around a saying quite regularly along the lines that suggested that sons somehow were not responsible for their own sins because of their fathers sins.  God wasn’t going to have any of it any longer—he instructed Ezekiel to warn the people—”As sure as I’m the living God, you’re not going to repeat this saying in Israel any longer. Every soul—man, woman, child—belongs to me, parent and child alike. You die for your own sin, not another’s (The Message Bible).”

We will each stand by our lonesome before the judgement seat of Christ and we won’t be given the opportunity to blame our fathers for our own dis-belief when it came to Jesus Christ.

No one else can have faith in Jesus for you—you must have a personal relationship with Jesus for yourself. 

I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.  If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world.  The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day.    -Jesus Christ  (John 12:46-48, ESV)  

Jesus didn’t come to condemn the world—it’s already condemned.

We can remain right where we always have been—in darkness—or we can come to Jesus.  It gets no plainer than that.  I remember coming to Jesus the first time.  And now it is a way of life.

I can’t count the times he came to me.

That Jesus didn’t come to point fingers at all of us sinners may not sound like news, but it is.  It’s news that needs repeating over and over and over again.  We can be sure that to present Jesus as the one who will forgive us no matter what—even if we fail to trust him—is not to present Jesus at all.  But presenting Jesus as the grand condemner as the soap-box preachers do—as some sort of hell-bent nut intent on sending as many people to hell as possible—isn’t the Jesus of the Bible either.  But the good news will never change no matter who attempts to re-write it—Jesus came to save sinners and to somehow make saints out of them—not to throw stones at them.  John 3:16 could easily be the most recited verse in the Bible—but the verse that follows is as good as any in the Holy Scriptures. 

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.    (John 3:17, ESV)

He came to save those who would simply trust him enough to come to him.

Period. 

For those of us who wish to put Jesus into a box and somehow fit him into the small ideas we have about him—we need to think again.