Speaking to His disciples, Jesus said, in Matthew 7:11, “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him.” This is, at first, a little shocking, since we are also disciples and that means we too are evil. This accusation of our Lord is substantiated by another one of His statements in Mark 10:18 that no one is good on Earth.

While we should never desecrate people, even ourselves, we do need to realize that we are all evil by God’s standards. However, all believers can exult in God’s grace and forgiveness in that we are told in Ephesians 2:8-9,“For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. Not of works, lest anyone should boast.”

This all adds up to a very important principle: We all need to remain humble and grateful to God for loving us in spite of our evil and rebellious nature. What a wonderful and loving Father we have when we believe in and trust Christ as our personal Savior!

1 John 1:9 is a most comforting verse. In it God promises, “If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” We can see from this statement, however, that we must confess our sins; we must repent. Jesus told the Galileans, “I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3). 

Whenever a Christian sins, and every single one does, it never threatens his salvation and home in Heaven. But sin does grieve God and hurt our fellowship with Him. It makes us feel that God is distant. The truth is that God never moves; He is always in the heart of any Christian. Jesus said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5).We move away from God when we sin.

So, let us simply do the best we can while living in this evil and decadent world. May we never be led to doubt God’s love and our salvation by ignorant preachers or other people who teach “works salvation” by demanding that we live a particular way, doing some things and not doing other things, lest we lose our salvation. The plain truth is that a Christian is a child of God and can never lose his salvation. Paul warned against listening to those who try to preach “works salvation,” and he roundly condemned it. The Bible makes it crystal clear that there is nothing at all we can do to earn salvation. If we could, there would have never been any need for God’s grace, which means unmerited favor.

This goes back to Ephesians 2:8-9, which emphasizes grace alone. I often refer to the thief on the cross who was being crucified along with Jesus. This man could not serve the Lord in any way, but he was blessed with enough sense to realize that Jesus was the Christ and to call on Him for salvation. That day he went to Heaven simply by calling on Christ to save him. Paul declared in Romans 10:13 that, “Whoever shall call on the name of the Lord will be saved.”