May your unfailing love come to me, Lord, your salvation, according to your promise.
—Psalm 119:41
Here’s a pop quiz to find out how
risk averse you are:
1. Would you go skydiving with a
company whose parachutes opened only half the time?
2. Would you go bungee jumping if
the person taking your money mentioned in casual conversation that his company had
a 50 percent survival rate?
3. Would you fly with an airline whose
track record boasted an equal number of crash landings and safe arrivals?
Maybe you’re someone who wouldn’t
go skydiving or bungee jumping under the best of circumstances. But even if you
consider yourself a risk taker, you’d probably think twice before signing up
for something with such a high fail factor.
As people who live on the planet
Earth, we can’t avoid some amount of risk in our lives. Every activity involves
some inherent danger, whether it’s getting behind the wheel of a car, stepping
into an elevator, or eating sushi. And some degree of risk is good, whether
we’re making an investment, undertaking a new venture, or taking a leap of
faith.
But when it comes to
life-and-death situations that require us to put our trust in something, we’d
be foolish to jump in without first determining how trustworthy that person or
thing is. Just as we wouldn’t take a physical risk without investigating the
reliability of the source, so we need to check into who we’re entrusting our eternal
future to.
The prevailing worldview in our
culture is that all religions are equal, that all roads lead to God. The world
tells you it doesn’t really matter what you put your trust in. But Scripture
makes it clear that anyone or anything we’re counting on to save us other than
Christ will eventually fail us. Psalm 135:15-18 says this about false gods and
those who follow them: “They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but cannot see. They have
ears, but cannot hear, nor is there breath in their mouths. Those
who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them.”
In a world full of risk, it’s a
relief to read in Psalm 119 that God’s salvation is unfailing. At the time of
the psalmist’s writing, he couldn’t see God’s entire plan of salvation yet. He
had only a glimmer, a foreshadowing of what was to come. But now we have the
whole picture—the fulfillment of God’s salvation through the life and work of
Jesus Christ.
Jesus made it clear that he is the
only way to salvation: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except
through me” (John 14:6).
Other religions may have figures
who pointed out a way, but only Jesus is the way. His broken body serves as the
bridge between sinful people and a holy God.
Other religions may claim to know
the truth, but only Jesus himself is the truth. He is every true word that God
has spoken, in the flesh.
Other religions may claim to
improve your life, but only Jesus is the life. If you looked at every grave
from every religious leader who ever lived, only Jesus’ grave remains empty.
When God offers us salvation, he
doesn’t just offer a way; he makes himself the way. And he is the way that
never fails.
What does it mean to you that God’s salvation is unfailing? What sets
the way of Christ apart from other religions?
—Stephanie Rische
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