It is absolutely true that we do not slide into salvation. Receiving Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior is a decisive, instantaneous action at a specific point in time.

But our receiving of Christ in a decisive, instantaneous action does not cover or excuse our behavior during the subsequent days of our discipleship. Every day we are to be working out our salvation. Every day we are to be hearing His voice and believing in God. It is only then that we are free from condemnation.

Jesus Christ is the small Gate. He also is the Way to eternal life—a difficult path filled with various pressures. Are you being saved right now? Are you interacting with the Lord Jesus so that the worldliness, lust, and self-will of your personality are being brought under His feet? If not you are not being saved. You have your lamp, the Bible, but you are running out of oil.

Yesterday and tomorrow are not the days of salvation. The Day of Salvation is only today. When tomorrow comes it will be today. If you are not faithful in the least you will not be entrusted with the greater in the future.

Evangelical theology is horribly off base in that it portrays a profession of faith in the atonement as a ticket that one holds until he or she dies. Then the ticket is presented at the gate of Heaven and the angels stand back and let the individual enter.

This is mythology. It has absolutely nothing to do with the new covenant.

The new covenant is the body and blood of Jesus Christ that we must eat and keep on eating if we are to lay hold on eternal life. You and I are learning to live by that Divine Life today, or we are abiding in death no matter how much of a profession of Christ we make or how accurate our doctrinal beliefs are.

God is not looking at our theology. God is looking for the Life of His Son in us. Do you believe that?

Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. (John 6:57—NIV)

The above verse is to me one of the most tremendous, the most significant of the entire Scriptures.

How did the living Father send the Lord Jesus? How does Jesus live because of the Father?

Jesus reveals all that the Father is. Everything that Jesus thinks, imagines, hopes, says, does, comes from the holy Father. Whoever has seen Jesus has seen the Father. The Father and Jesus are not the same person but they are entirely one in Substance, in Virtue, in Mind, in action, in hope.

We have been called to this Oneness—nothing short of it! When we are feeding on the Lord Jesus we are learning to be of the Substance, Virtue, Mind, action, and hope of the Lord Jesus. As He is so are we in this world.

To be continued.