(Gloria Franchi video)

In last week’s column, we defined the basic “problem” that spiritual salvation addresses related to the lost spiritual state of a person’s soul.

But what are the stakes in this matter? So, what if we get it wrong? Doesn’t God just “grade on the curve” anyway?

We have been born into a world that is bound by space and time, and it defies imagining that a state of being without such constraints could even exist.

To most people, the word “death” means a singular event at the end of a person’s life, which is over once and for all.

But scripture describes a much more sobering event that follows a person’s physical death.

Our “first death” results in the separation of our spirit from our body, and then we are faced with a “second death,” which results in the separation of our spirit from God, eternally — a most unpleasant notion.

Cosmic Audit

Here is how the Book of Revelation puts it:

“I saw a Great White Throne and the One Enthroned. Nothing could stand before or against the Presence, nothing in Heaven, nothing on earth. And then I saw all the dead, great and small, standing there — before the Throne! And books were opened.

“Then another book was opened: The Book of Life. The dead were judged by what was written in the books, by the way they had lived. Sea released its dead, Death and Hell turned in their dead.

“Each man and woman was judged by the way he or she had lived. Then Death and Hell were hurled into Lake Fire. This is the second death — Lake Fire. Anyone whose name was not found inscribed in the Book of Life was hurled into Lake Fire.”

Obviously, that “second death” is something any thinking person would do well to avoid.

“One does not miss heaven by a hair, but by constant effort to avoid and escape God.” Dallas willard

Unfortunately, all too many of us have spent a lifetime putting off any discussion of these things, believing that somehow it will go away.

Although we may treat this subject somewhat flippantly, God most certainly does not.

In his book Renovation of the Heart, the late Christian philosopher Dallas Willard warned:

“We should be very sure that the ruined soul is not one who has missed a few more or less important theological points and will flunk a theological examination at the end of life. Hell is not an ‘oops!’ or a slip. One does not miss heaven by a hair, but by constant effort to avoid and escape God.

“Outer darkness is for one who, everything said, wants it, whose entire orientation has slowly and firmly set itself against God and therefore against how the universe actually is. It is for those who are disastrously in error about their own life and their place before God and man.

“The ruined soul must be willing to hear of and recognize its own ruin before it can find out how to enter a different path, the path of eternal life …”

Ultimately, if we insist on holding on to our inner darkness, outer darkness is sure to follow. That is why the scriptures so often call us to repentance.

In the Greek of the New Testament, this is the word “metanoeo,” which means “to think differently or afterward, i.e. reconsider.”

Literally, we are called to a new mind on the matter of what makes us tick and how we are intended to fit into God’s universe as He created it.

Definition of a True Christian

It should be obvious by now that, when it comes to becoming a Christian (that is, spiritually saved), we are not talking about the church you attend or any religious ritual that you may have experienced.

Simply put, becoming a Christian is a matter of life and death, involving profound inner transformation so momentous that Jesus referred to it as being “born again.”

The result is quite literally, a change in species. You were born the first time “in Adam,” (our default position) who is the head of a fatally flawed gene pool. Then, through spiritual rebirth, you are placed “in Christ,” emerging as a totally different class of human.

This came as something of a shock to those who first heard about it, especially the religious crowd who dogged Jesus’ every step.

Listen to this lively exchange:

“‘How can anyone,’ said Nicodemus, ‘be born who has already been born and grown up? You can’t re-enter your mother’s womb and be born again. What are you saying with this ‘born-from-above’ talk?’

“Jesus said, ‘You’re not listening. Let me say it again. Unless a person submits to this original creation — the ‘wind-hovering-over-the-water’ creation, the invisible moving the visible, a baptism into a new life — it’s not possible to enter God’s kingdom.

“‘When you look at a baby, it’s just that: a body you can look at and touch. But the person who takes shape within is formed by something you can’t see and touch — the Spirit — and becomes a living spirit.’”

How about you? Do you believe this?

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