One of the ways I like to explain salvation is with the difference between a ladder and a chair.
Everyone wants you to climb a ladder.
Too many people think getting right with God is like climbing a ladder: Do more good works, try harder to be better, commit to doing more things, and maybe you’ll make it to the top.
In fact, outside of Christianity, every world religion’s method of salvation is a ladder approach. You have to work your way into Heaven by climbing various rungs to God.
Every world religion has the same ladder approach, just with different rungs. Catholicism has the seven sacraments, Buddhism the eightfold path, Judaism has the Ten Commandments, Islam the five pillars, and so on. All of them have rungs you must climb to get to God.
Sadly, many Protestants have developed their own ladder approach to God: turn, try, cry, commit, surrender, get baptized, etc.
But the rung approach is the wrong approach.
He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of His mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.
Only true Christianity recognizes this. Only the true Gospel teaches this. Only true Christianity views salvation as a chair, not a ladder.
But you should sit in the chair.
You don’t try to climb a chair. That would be silly! You simply sit in it and trust it to hold you.
In the same way, we can’t earn our salvation by climbing a ladder to Heaven. We simply rest on what Jesus did for us on the cross. We transfer our trust from our own vain efforts to His finished work on the cross, and then we are saved! He gives us eternal life as a free gift through simple faith in Christ, and then He begins the transformation process within us.
The Bible makes this clear:
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.
The ladder says achieve.
But Jesus says believe.
Stop climbing, and sit down.
Stop trying to climb your way to God. Put your full weight on Christ, and rest on what He’s already done on the cross on your behalf.
This is the good news of the Gospel. This is the message we must share!
To hear more about the ladder versus the chair analogy, check out my Instagram post.
