Quasi-Indefatigable Xenolith

The Goal of Transcendence

Love Sufficient to Salvation

In relation to God and Christ, many people seem to not just want the "cake" of their salvation, they want Diety to spoon it into each mouth and gently dab all lips with a silk napkin. Many believers have been taught that Christ and God are slavishly bound to "save" them no matter what and that pesky concepts like commandments or hell or repentance or goodness are immaterial to a Saviour that must love and redeem all "unconditionally".

What is the love of God and Christ?

These are mighty, almost incomprehensibly large gifts.

But...

When we want Christ to save us and expect that, out of some "unconditional" love, he will do it without our full engagement in repentance and required changes for the better, we are saying that all of his gifts are not sufficient and he must make up for our reluctance to do our part. Christ asks for very little in exchange for these wonderous gifts, but far too many expect that "God's love" must override what small growth is commanded of us.

When we ask more of Christ in such a way, we are actually asking him to renegotiate the terms of salvation so we need to do nothing for it. We say that the price that Christ asks of us is too high and need to be reduced or eliminated altogether. We threaten that if he doesn't exempt us from any requirement, we will put out the word that Christ is a liar who doesn't really love us. We essentially try to blackmail him by saying he isn't an adequate Savior if he doesn't just save us with no effort on our parts.

Conversely...

Christ has made the requirements for exaltation quite clear. There are things that we must do, such as baptism by the proper authority. There are specific commandments to be kept. There is demanded behavior. There is our repentance of our sins to be done. There are families to form and raise. There are charitable works to accomplish. There is evil to overcome. We cannot blithely set these things aside in the name of "love" and simply ignore essential personal development. We certainly cannot teach others that they are universally exempt from what Christ has taught as commandments and expect everyone to still get some heavenly "pass".

The terms of salvation have been set by Christ and are already remarkably generous in our favor. This constitutes his love: a love beyond anything that we deserve. To demand that the Lord to be even more generous in the name of some "unconditional" love is a ploy to get everything for nothing, which flies in the face of God's plan for our eternal development. Life with God is the reward for our efforts to become like Christ by obediently following his example. This is the way and we only denigrate the Savior and his gifts if we demand some easier and "more loving" path to heaven.