In Life, you are either a BELIEVER or just BUSY. Being a Believer means: that you literally and physically have no evidence to show but you know it will happen or actually it is. In salvation matters, it means recognizing your real problem which is SIN and evaluating your strength as a fallen sinner, then looking at available solutions which are two: 1. Keep the Law (which you can’t) or 2. Ask for the Grace of God to be saved from the consequences of your failure (which is eternal death) and be fixed beyond your grave.
And after realizing you cannot help yourself regardless of how much you try through the Law, you believe that the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ were for you, and once you believe that, it all debits itself on your account. And Just like that, you are righteous, not in what you do but rather you have the righteousness of God that excludes you from the penalty of eternal death.
On the other hand, however, being BUSY, might be a difficult concept to explain but allow me to illustrate how the word ‘Busy’ makes most of us think and feel. Am busy, is a phrase many people like to use especially when they want to excuse themselves from other responsibilities or when they want to avoid distractions. They say am sorry, am busy, too busy, too tight, I have too much on my desk, etc.
This word, however, makes people feel: anxious, like there is a shortage of time and way too much to be done, it makes people feel overwhelmed and fearful that they won’t get it all done, Am Busy is a Half-full Glass attitude, Busy is when you are over-scheduled, tired, stressed out and stuck. When someone says: “I’m busy”, I realized also makes them feel they are not just important but more important, more validated than any other person around them.
We all will soon realize that this whole Busy thing is both a limiting belief and a selfish agenda. The busier we are or feel, the less creative we are and never free. We become captives in prisons of our own creation. Let me ask you, are you sure you will go to heaven or you still have to fix a few things before that guarantee is issued? Do you sometimes feel the anxiety about your eternal destiny?
When you evaluate your religious assurance on matters of Heaven and Hell, do you have this HALF-FULL GLASS ATTITUDE? Do you in your religious doctrinal belief feel like your religion and its members are more important than those outside your belief circles? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you are not a BELIEVER but a BUSY person.
Before the gospel reaches and touches a soul, that soul is too busy in two ways: it can be Busy in the Secular way or secondly, it can be Religiously Busy.
The Secular Way:
People in the secular world are busy, busy in politics, in sports, in Music and Entertainment, busy in Pornography, busy thieves, busy corrupt officials, aggressive rapists, busy prostitutes, busy, busy, busy world. Busy building the world and busy breaking it down. When you look at the streets, everyone is in a rush, it is a fast world with fast foods in fact. It is a secular world geared to the works of the flesh that Galatians 5:19-21 talks about.
In the secular world, we are busy satisfying and gratifying our bodily desires. We might be busy just as Solomon was but this is what he said:
Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, For my heart rejoiced in all my labor; And this was my reward from all my labor. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done And on the labor in which I had toiled; And indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 2:10-11 NKJ).
Every week, we are busy in this world, and we are always in a rat race and we tend to carry the same busy traits to our spiritual lives. And get busy where we are supposed to believe. And this brings me to the religious busy-ness of our lives.
The Religious Way:
First, let me point out that having a religion does not necessarily mean that one has a relationship with Jesus Christ. So in case you didn’t know, there are numerous unchristian religious people in the world. Jesus himself taught us that:
Not everyone who says, Lord, lord is for me (Mathew 7).
Human beings are busy people in a religious manner. They are not believers but busy religious men and women throughout their lives. I cannot explain this more than this parable in Luke 18:9-14 told by Jesus Christ does:
And He also told this parable to certain ones who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt:
“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee, and the other a tax-gatherer. “The Pharisee stood and was praying thus to himself, ‘God, I thank Thee that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax-gatherer. ‘I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’
“But the tax-gatherer, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’
“I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled, but he who humbles himself shall be exalted.”
This parable specifically tells what it means to be a believer as opposed to what it essentially means being religiously busy. It is not that the Pharisee did anything wrong but rather he was BUSY instead of BELIEVING. The problem with religious folks is doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. They keep the law and that is a good thing to do, the problem is that they keep the law to fix their sin/sinning. And that is the wrong reason. They are busy in doing all religious good deeds, and that is the right MEANS.
However all the good they do, they do it to have a claim on God which is a wrong END to their MEANS. According to Jesus, the guy who was religiously busy throughout his life was denied and denounced while the sinner who had nothing but faith was accepted and granted. The Question is:
ARE YOU A BUSY SINNER or A BELIEVING ONE?
This is the central issue surrounding the debate around the true Gospel of Righteousness by Grace through Faith alone and Righteousness by works. The debate is not on whether some people are sinners and others are not. Romans 3:23 sorted all of us and we know that we are all fallen sinners Christians or not, religious or pagan. The common denominator is SINNERS.
The question is always on how a sinner is saved and how that sinner can be sure about their salvation. John 3:16 answers this question by saying:
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
Note that the Bible does not say that: whoever is busy but whoever believes, it doesn’t say that whoever keeps the law or does and doesn’t what but whoever believes. The difference between a believing sinner and a busy sinner is not in the quality and quantity of their sin or sinning but in what they do about their sin and sinning.
Believers trust the Lord to both forgive their confessed sins/sinning and empower them to overcome while Busy sinners are busy trying to fix themselves, covering their sin and trying to reverse their sin. This is how the scriptures describe their efforts:
For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it. For he who said, “Do not commit adultery,” said also, “Do not kill.” If you do not commit adultery but do kill, you have become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but has not works? Can his faith save him? (Jam 2:10-12, 14 RSV).
In other words, busy sinners are chasing their tails in the attempt to fix their sin. And the Word of God addresses them as fools in these words:
O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh? (Gal 3:1-3 RSV)
As I conclude, I would like to categorically make it clear that Heaven is not for saints but just like Hell, it is for sinners. Eventually, HEAVEN will be filled with sinners who BELIEVED and HELL will be filled with sinners who were BUSY. The determining factor will be that some are BELIEVING SINNERS and the Bible in Romans 3:24-26 describes them like this:
Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past, for he was looking ahead and including them in what he would do in this present time. God did this to demonstrate his righteousness, for he himself is fair and just, and he declares sinners to be right in his sight when they believe in Jesus.
While others are BUSY SINNERS who, like Adam are trying to cover their nakedness with leaves of Righteousness by Works that dry and drop-off again and again to expose them.
The question to each of us today is: are you a BELIEVER in the finished work of Jesus Christ or you are BUSY contributing to it and trying to fix yourself for heaven? The Bible says:
For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God—not because of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:8-10 RSV).
My friend the only reason as to why we are saved by grace through faith is because our problem can only be forgiven but not fixed.
God bless you, I invoke Truth Reason and Faith
Pr. ITM WHITE
The Gospel Hawker
iTiS Well of Worship Fellowship (John 4:24) 