No Free Tickets

I keep getting calls from resorts letting me know that I have been “specially chosen” to receive free tickets to some exotic location where I will be pampered and treated like royalty. All I need to do is talk to a representative and make arrangements and I will be off to a vacation paradise. Of course, it is never quite that easy. There is always some fine print to the deal, a high-pressure sales presentation, follow-up phone calls, limited availability on dates, locations, airlines, airports, etc. By the time you jump through all the hoops, it ends up being more trouble than it is worth and “free” never really means free.

For the past couple of weeks, I have been driving past a church reader board, on my way to work, that says, “Free tickets to heaven, inquire inside.” If you have had experiences like mine, such a line may raise your suspicions. Like the calls from the resort, it sounds too good to be true. Who gives away a trip to paradise for nothing?

We have created a problem for ourselves in the church. We have started to sound like slick salesmen willing to peddle a twisted version of the truth for the sake of getting people through the doors. Once we get them inside, we can turn up the heat and put the pressure on for a commitment. But in our evangelical zeal to have people grab their tickets to heaven, we have actually asked for no commitment at all. We are selling a version of Christianity that implies the only thing that matters is having a ticket to heaven. It’s like having a Costco card, but you don’t have to pay for it. Being a Christian means you believe some stuff about Jesus, said a prayer, maybe got dunked in water and then got your spiritual “get out of jail free” card.

But the version of Christianity that we so often pitch, ignores the not-so-fine print of scripture. Salvation and a trip to heaven is not a “freebie” that gets tossed to us when we say a prayer. We do not get to distribute the tickets simply because we were able to manipulate the emotions of a person so that they would succumb to raising their hand in an auditorium. A ticket to heaven isn’t granted as the result of a momentary spiritual high.

The missing element in this line of thinking is the notion that salvation is about reconciliation. Reconciliation does not come simply from momentary belief, but enduring faith that causes us to follow in the ways of Jesus. Following Jesus is more than a momentary decision, a simple prayer, or an emotional response to a passionate speech. The house that stands on the rock, doesn’t stand because of belief, it stands because we surrender our will to the commands and teachings of Jesus as an expression of our faith.

Here is an important truth: That prayer you said will not solve all your problems. In fact, that prayer might make things worse, before they get better, but the reality is that it might not ever get better at all. The magic ticket to heaven doesn’t exist and neither does the magic cure to fix your life. That doesn’t mean that it can’t happen, it just means you shouldn’t count on it. If you are saying the prayer to get your ticket to heaven punched and to fix your life that you have made a mess (and, in one way or another, we have all made our lives a mess), you are saying the prayer for the wrong reasons and you shouldn’t count on either one happening. A prayer of submission and repentance, as well as baptism, are not tickets to a blissful life. They are a statement that we will give up our lives for Christ. They are the first steps in becoming disciples of Jesus.

Unfortunately, those of us in the church, have often led others to believe what the church reader board says. In subtle and not so subtle ways we have communicated to those who are willing to listen, that getting into heaven is easy and fixing your life is as simple as saying a prayer. And people have bought it. They have believed it. They have said the prayer and waited for the magic to happen. For a while the “high” carries them along, but before long they realize that they are still a mess, people are still disappointing, and the church is far from being perfect. As reality sets in they care less and less about the free tickets because the magic they expected didn’t happen. And soon we are left wondering why they don’t show up on Sundays anymore.

Here is another important truth: a ticket to heaven will cost you your life.

We do not communicate this second truth very well in the church. It may not be an appealing message, but it is a more honest one. You are not a “follower” of Jesus Christ simply because you said a prayer or got dunked in a tank of water. I know this is crazy, but what makes you a follower of Jesus is that you, well, follow Jesus. If you read the words of Jesus in the gospels, he never talks about “freebies.” In fact, it is just the opposite. He talks constantly about the cost of following him and warns us to count the cost before we commit. He doesn’t talk about your life being great because you follow him, he says that if you follow him you will have trouble. Even more frightening he talks about separating sheep and goats, the pretenders from the real deal, those who live out the teachings of Christ and those who do not. He ends by saying what will happen to each. It’s not a pretty picture for those who thought they had a free ticket to heaven.

We continue to cling to Ephesians 2:8-9 and misunderstand its place in the full context of the gospel. We like seeing the “free” and “not by works” part of that passage and so we tend to read it (and memorize it) to the exclusion of the rest of the New Testament. The point of Ephesians 2:8-9, though, is not to emphasize the ease with which we can get to heaven, but the incredible graciousness and mercy of God. Although salvation will cost us our lives, it is not our lives that pay for our salvation. Our lives can’t pay for our salvation, because as important as we think our lives are, they are worthless in comparison to what God has to offer.

Yes, grace is free. Mercy is free. Even faith is, in a sense, a free gift from God. And yes, salvation is free, but not in the way we so often sell it. It is free because we don’t have enough to pay for it. There is nothing that we could ever do to earn our way. The ultimate price is beyond our reach, but Jesus has paid it for us. When we surrender our lives to Christ, we are not paying the cost of admission, we are succumbing to the reality of our position. The only thing we have to offer, inadequate as it is, is our lives.

There is another aspect of all this. Salvation is not just the promise of heaven, it is the promise of a transformed life, our life. It is the promise of a new creation, now. It is not a promise that everything will be blissful or even that everything will be “fixed,” it is the promise that we will become a new person. But you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

You can’t be a new creation if you are not willing to give up the old one. You can’t hang on to the old person and become a new person at the same time. We must understand, however, that the process of transformation might take time, but the commitment is “all or nothing.” That is where we must count the cost. Are you willing to give up everything so that the Holy Spirit can begin a new work in you? That is not a purely figurative, spiritual question.

If you are looking for free tickets to heaven, you can go to that church, but you won’t find what you are looking for. You won’t find free tickets to heaven in any church. There is no such thing. As the church, we need to stop leading people to believe there is.