**Immediately below this blog is a message I preached not too long ago to help people understand that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

Stop trying to work your way to heaven.

It’s called “legalism.” It’s bondage. And it will suck the life out of you.

It’s the day-after-day “checking off the boxes” of “good works” to meet God’s minimum level of approval so that, when you die, your “good” works outweigh your “bad.”

There’s only one problem with this.

It’s unbiblical and impossible.

To believe our human effort – even the tiniest “good work” – can make us righteous in God’s sight completely nullifies the Cross.

In short, if we can earn our way to heaven, Jesus died for nothing.

Because culture has forever been performance-based, it’s hard to wrap our minds around how only faith in Christ’s sacrifice for us on the Cross is enough.

Paul wrote that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. (cf. Ephesians 2:8-9)

Righteousness before God = Jesus + nothing.

Jesus said,

“This is the only work God wants from you: Believe in the One he has sent…. Human effort accomplishes nothing.” – John 6:29, 63 (nlt)

What an exhausting and nervous way to have to live life: never knowing for certain if you’ve “checked off enough boxes” to meet God’s full approval.

Author, Philip Yancey, rightly wrote,

There’s nothing you can do to make God love you any more; and there’s nothing you can do to make God love you any less.

Our eternal salvation is secured not by anything we can do, but rather on what Christ did when he gave his life as an atoning sacrifice on the Cross.

This is what Paul meant when he wrote,

For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ. – 2 Corinthians 5:21

Good works are not required for our salvation. Rather, they are evidence of our salvation.

“What must I do to be saved?”, one man asked Paul.  “Believe in the Lord Jesus,” Paul to him, “and you will be saved.” – Acts 16:30-31

Jesus is enough.

When the Galatians Christians began to listen to the False Teachers who told them salvation must be attained by human effort, Paul asked them,

“O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you (placed a spell upon you to get you to believe such a devilish lie?) – Galatians 3:1

This is precisely what I address in the message below.

Solus Christus, Nick