Only God's counsel leads to salvation

I get the most out of sermons when I take notes and can check up later on things that are especially helpful or don’t sound right. So, I highly recommend it to others. During one recent sermon, our preacher said something like, “Don’t let the wisdom of the world fool you.” Sometimes I abbreviate words to keep up and I abbreviated that, “Don’t be fooled by WoW.” When I reread that, I thought, “Hmm! We can be WoWed by the wisdom of the world and follow a path that doesn’t lead to heaven (Matthew 7:13-14)!”

While Jesus is the way (“the” meaning only) unto eternal life, other ways often seem right to people because they’ll believe anything, but those all end in death (John 14:6; Acts 4:12; Proverbs 14:12, 15; 12:15; Jeremiah 10:23). Those other ways are often very close to the truth, but they don’t include the whole counsel of God that leads to salvation (Acts 20:26-27; 2 Corinthians 11:13-15). Fact is, only truth comes from God and all else is false and comes from Satan (John 8:44).

Satan’s first lie that we know of was when he convinced himself that he could be equal to or replace God altogether (Isaiah 14:12-15; Luke 10:18; Revelation 14:7-12). Having been kicked out of heaven, Satan now prowls/slithers around looking for opportunities to deceive people and lead them away from God, even still using equality with God as a lure (Job 1:6-7; 1 Peter 5:8-9; Genesis 3:1-11; Matthew 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-13). Because Jesus was tempted like that, Christians also will be (Hebrews 4:15).

Now while humankind has the knowledge of good and evil (the wisdom of the world), we’re not born with the wisdom to use that appropriately. We only get that wisdom by being born into God’s family and seeking to attain his wisdom (James 3:13-18; 1:5-8; Isaiah 59:1-2; Acts 2:38-39; 22:16; Proverbs 8:12-17). One of Satan’s schemes is to wow people into thinking that they know better than God even in matters of salvation (1 Corinthians 1:18-25; 3:18-20). God will allow those who don’t accept the foolishness of the cross to be deceived because he has given each person the right to decide whether or not to believe and obey him to inherit eternal life (2 Thessalonians 2:9-12; Joshua 24:14-15; Romans 6:16-18).

You can understand God’s will in regard to your (everyone’s) salvation (Ephesians 3:4; 2 Timothy 2:15; 3:16-17). His commands about how to become a Christian are straightforward, understandable, and not burdensome and, although, some teach that they are foolishness that set aside God’s grace, they do not (1 John 5:1-5; Romans 6:3-7; Galatians 2:20-21; 5:24).

Don’t let Satan outwit you by WoWing you with false, worldly wisdom (2 Corinthians 2:11). You can know the truth and that truth, and only that truth, can set you free from sin so you can avoid its consequences (John 8:31-32; Romans 6:23). So just take God at his word and obey him out of faith (Ephesians 2:8-9; Hebrews 11:6; John 14:15-21).

Leonard Lauriault writes about faith for the Quay County Sun. Contact him at [email protected]