Center of the World

Easter was just yesterday, and following an Easter service at the church my family has been faithfully attending for around a year I was reminded of a difficult conversation I once had. The conversation was a pivotal one in my journey, it was a rock-the-boat moment and today I’d like to share parts of it with you…

Picture with me a traditional office-style room and two people sitting across from each other in very boring and slightly uncomfortable chairs. One is anxious and over-dressed, and one is casual and relaxed with a fringe of hair and even temper. I am the overdressed one. 

Here is the conversation that unfolds;

“Has anyone ever told you that the world does not revolve around you?” He folds his hands together and crosses his legs. I’m caught off guard by the feminine pose and the question alike.

“Of course.” My answer comes out in a mumble. Of course, I have heard that phrase. I have heard it said a million times. Teachers have told me, my parents have told me, preachers and even friends growing up would remind me. I look at him and while I try to hide the look on my face, I know it is pretty obvious.

My face asks him “why in the world would you ask me such a dumb question?”

“Do you think the world revolves around you?” He asks me, not with his face but with his actual voice. Outloud. 

I am stunned for a moment and find myself sitting up straighter and stiffer as I answer. “Of course not. I know that the world does not revolve around me.”

“Let me ask you this then,” he uncrosses his legs and leans forward like he is going to share a secret with me. There is an odd pause and then he asks “Do you think your salvation revolves around you?”

I don’t know exactly how to answer that question. I honestly do not even know how to process the question I think I am being asked. I sit on my seat and stare at him, my eyes are blinking in rapid succession and I can feel little beads of sweat start to drip down my neck under my hair.

“Do I think that my salvation revolves around me?” I ask the question back to him. My back stiffens and my eyes continue to blink as if that will somehow make the words that I am repeating make more sense inside of my head.

He nods and once again crosses his legs. His back leans into his chair and his body seems to relax. I do not feel relaxed. I feel uncomfortable. The little bits of sweat on my neck feel sticky and my cheeks begin to fill with heat. The room feels like it has gotten twenty degrees warmer in a matter of seconds.

“Why?” I finally feel my voice asking. “Why would I ever think that?”

I have taken the route of indignation. Righteous-indignation. How could this man think that I could ever place the weight of salvation in my own hands? How could this man believe that I think that I am worthy of such a thing? What gives him the right to think this about me?

I feel the anger growing up inside of me and turning my cheeks an even darker shade of red as he begins to talk once again. “Do you want to know why I asked that question?”

Yes. No.

Yes, I want to know. But, also no. No, I do not want to know why you would ever think such a thing about me. How dare you. Seriously. How. Dare. You. Sir.

He does not wait for my response. I am sure he knows that I am angry. He is a trained professional. He has to be able to read the red-hot emotions on my face and my stiff body language. 

“You seem to take the brunt of the responsibility.”

“You seem to believe that you and the actions that you take create and secure your salvation, and in turn your life.”

I sit feeling what can only be described as dumbfounded. I can feel my eyebrows knitting themselves together as a strange confused look paints itself across my face.

“Aren’t we all responsible for our own actions?” I ask him and my voice sounds just as hard as I feel on the inside. These questions and assumptions feel stupid. 

He nods and lifts the notepad in his lap. He stopped writing a long time ago and now my eyes follow his as he glances down at the things he had written when our conversation had first begun.

“Here is what I want you to think about, and I do not want you to answer me, I just want you to think about this.” He pauses like he is trying to create some kind of dramatic emphasis and then looks me dead in the eye. He stares at me like he can see inside the whirlwind of my mind and the competing emotions that are jumping around inside my stomach. 

“Who secures your salvation?”

I open my mouth to try to answer him but he holds up a hand. “Do not answer. Just think about it.”  He puts his notebook away and all but pushes me out the door. Our talk is over and I am left to drive home and start making dinner. 

I push his questions far out of my head until I am lying in bed unable to sleep.

The clock on my phone says it's nearly one am. I should have been asleep a very long time ago. I stay in my bed and stare at the dark ceiling and finally allow myself to think on his question. “Who secures my salvation?”

What secures my salvation? I instinctually change the question.

What keeps my salvation secure? That is the question I start to ask myself. I make a mental list in my head and then copy it onto the notes on my phone.

What are the things that keep me saved after I am saved? I start typing the obvious answers, prayer, reading the Bible, attending church, tithing, modest dress, holiness, and separation. Something inside my gut drops to my toes and an instant flood of tears rushes down my cheeks.

I am caught completely by surprise.

Something inside of me flips. Something clicks.

As I stare down at the list I realize one huge and terrifying fact about myself.

I do believe that my salvation is dependent on myself. I do believe that my salvation revolves around me and what I do. Not only do I act and believe like I am the center of the world, I also act, and more importantly believe that I secure my own salvation.

The finished work on the cross means nothing to me, because I don’t actually believe the sacrifice made on the cross finished everything, I believe that it only started the work that I now have to finish with my own actions.

In that sleepless moment, I had what I can only describe as a come to Jesus moment, a moment that broke something inside of me into a million tiny pieces, a moment where I realized that I truly was full of sin and pride and that I was in need of a resurrected Savior.

Our salvation depends solely upon Jesus Christ, there is absolutely nothing we can do as humans that will create or maintain our own salvation. Thinking and believing that we must do something to become deserving is a very human thing to do, but the more we concentrate on it and the more we try to work, the more we will realize that we are helpless, hopeless, and flawed. We will never, ever be deserving, we (on our own) will never be worthy and never be perfect.

No sacrifice we ever make will be enough. No action we take will ever be enough.

God knew us and all of our shortcomings the moment He created us.

Jesus Christ became our substitute, taking sin’s penalty, living the perfect life that we never, ever could. He did it. He did it all. We, and our inability to be good enough were the sole reason Jesus Christ came.

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21ESV) 

The work necessary to provide salvation was fully accomplished by Jesus Himself, who lived a perfect life, took God’s judgment for sin, and rose again from the dead. The Bible is ridiculously clear that our own works do not help earn salvation. 

We are saved “not because of righteous things we had done” or “Not by works” because “There is no one righteous, not even one.” 

My little list of sacrifices and submissions, the things I was doing that I believed kept me “good enough to be saved” no matter what they were or how “good” I thought I was, it was never good enough, because it was never about me.

Titus 3:5, Ephesians 2:9, Romans 3:23, Matthew 19:17, Isaiah 64:6, Romans 3:10

Over one hundred times in the New Testament it is said that faith and belief in Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on the cross is the sole condition for salvation (John 1:12; Acts 16:31), nothing else, nothing extra. 

Grace is God giving us something we cannot earn or deserve. According to Romans 11:6, “works” of any kind destroy grace—salvation is not a job that you work, and “being saved” is not the paycheck you earn at the end of your shift.

It is not lazy, or doing less to accept the grace of God and the gift He offers us. It is not taking “the easy way out” to rest in the promises of eternal life. It is accepting and acknowledging that Jesus Christ paid it all. 

Salvation is a sovereign act. We cannot discount that, instead we have to cling to it.

Our salvation does not revolve around us. The world does not revolve around us.