The Fundamental Blog

In the witness of my faith before others, I have come across an objection that seems to recur time and time again. A person who has lived a life with little regard for the things of God, will sometimes conjure up the idea that it is too late for them to be saved. They say this as though there were a time limit on the blessings of God, or that He is somehow restrained by the confines of mortal time, to which only we are subject. I know people who have heard the message along with their children and later said, “It’s a fine thing for the kids, but I’m too old to have it do me any good.”

I may be an odd duck, but I have to believe that this has happened to more people than just me! Have you heard this? Do you have a Biblical response? If you do not, then allow me to share some good news. The Bible gives us the perfect response to these people. If you turn to the book of Matthew, chapter 20, you will find the Biblical principle to help convince these people that it is never out of season, or too late for them to accept Christ.

Here we have the account of the landowner and the hired men. At several times throughout the day, the landowner went into the town square and hired workers to send into his vineyard. He set a fair wage and at the end of the day paid all the workers beginning with the last men hired. Those hired first, worked the longest and had to wait until the last to receive their wages. These workers, the first hired, saw that the landowner was paying the last hired, (though they only worked an hour), the same wage that they had agreed to accept and so they expected that they might receive more. This account gives us several lessons; to be content with the fulfillment of a fair bargain; as an illustration of the first being last; and as an example of how it’s never too late to accept the salvation of Jesus Christ.

Think of it, those that came at the end of the day, (the last), received the same reward as those that came early on. When you understand that the payment we receive from Christ is eternal life, you can begin to see that regardless of how late in life you make the decision for Christ, you get the same pay. If you make a genuine profession of faith on your deathbed at the age of 90, you are no less secure in your salvation than you would be if you had made the same decision at the age of 15. Neither the lateness of your age, nor the degree of your past sinfulness plays any role whatsoever in the assignment of eternal security.

Jesus Christ is the physical manifestation of the one and only living God of all creation. Now the character of God is such that there can be no half steps. God can not possess some love, He is love; and that love is all inclusive. Every attribute of His holiness is such that He has, in unlimited supply, everything that is! God can give love, or any other of His commodities, to all who would receive the blessing and not have any less than before he began to give it away. He can hear a billion prayers at once, and yet each one reaches His ear as if were the only one spoken. This same pattern exists when it comes to the saving grace which is offered through faith in Christ.

Salvation is an all-or-nothing proposition. We can not be saved, “a little bit.” We either are, or we are not. When we receive the gift of grace, there is no less grace available for the next person. When a person accepts the gift, the limit is endless and when the next person receives the same gift, it is endless for them as well. This is a very difficult thing to grasp with a mind bound with mortal, finite fetters. When considering eternal things, all examples break down but let’s use outer space as an example and see if it can be made to make sense.

Imagine that you could be shot into space, which we think of as endless. How far would you travel? Forever! Now then, if another person were to be shot into space as well, how far would they travel? Again, forever! Would the distance to be traveled be affected by the time of the launching? Since eternity is endless, would the first person be any closer to reaching it’s limit by virtue of being launched an hour earlier than the next person? A day? A year? 60 years? Of course not. The end of an endless journey is not reached any sooner just because you left a little earlier. So it is that the person hired early in the morning gets the same wage as the person hired at the eleventh hour!

If you think that you are way past the possibility of salvation because it is so late in the day, or that you will be penalized for waiting so long to come around, or even that it’s a waste of time because you have sinned so long and so severely; take a lesson from this account. John 10:9 says, “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved…” It does not say, “…most men that enter in,” or, “…any man that gets here before they are 50 years old,” or even, “…any man so long as they are not yet at death’s door!” No, it reads, “…ANY man!”

I know that no person was ever saved without the power of the Holy Spirit working in them. No person can be saved by losing an argument, and not by beating them up with the truths of the Bible. Apologetics is the discipline of proving the truth of one’s faith, and while I love to make the Christian apologetic arguments, I know that the field of apologetics can not save a single soul. What apologetics can do though, is help to clear away the logical roadblocks, the intellectual arguments that seem to hinder those from coming to the cross. The inability to accept that salvation is equally available to all ages is one such stumbling block. When you encounter this viewpoint, take it as an indication that the person holding that view simply does not yet understand the nature of God. This is a viewpoint that we can help overcome.

It is not necessarily essential to understand every doctrine, every nuance, every denominational difference that exists within Christendom, in order to accept the saving grace offered by God through faith in Jesus Christ. All that is needed is to understand that we are separated from God by sin, that He has given us a way to be reconciled to Him, and that, that way is by accepting in faith, the gift of grace in Christ. People spend entire lifetimes learning the ins and outs of the Christian faith. You can read the Bible a thousand times and still have the Spirit open your eyes to something that you never saw before. You can learn all there is to know, and learn only that you know less than you ever thought you did. But to allow someone to slip by because they think that they’re too old for Jesus; that’s something that should never be.

Our salvation is by faith alone. The admonition is to believe and be saved, or believe not, and be damned. To make the profession of faith and believe is a thing that occurs once in a moment’s time; the growth of the Christian walk lasts the remainder of one’s life, (however long that remainder might be), and continues into eternity. It matters little when in life we find ourselves at the wicket gate to begin the pilgrim’s path, only that we begin while there is yet breath in our bodies. We can not allow those on the road to Hell to remain there because of mistaken assumptions. We all walk a path; some, the path of the Christian, others the path of the damned. When you set out each day, make sure that the path you walk results in the proclamation that what you do is…


All for the Glory of Christ

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