(May 7, 2018 at 8:55 pm)Chad32 Wrote: I hear this from time to time. Grace is a free gift. All you have to do is accept Jesus into your heart. Except accepting Jesus into your heart usually means changing your life by abiding by a set of rules. When someone says "You need Jesus", they're implying you're living your life wrong. But if becoming a christian means making a drastic change in your lifestyle, then it's not really a free gift. You can't just tell Jesus you'll take the gift, and keep living in "sin", so why do people call it free?
It all depends - on whom you get your information from. Some Christian denominations reckon that the determination of who will get to heaven is pre-ordained, others reckon that doing good deeds is enough. Then there's the lot who reckon that accepting "Jesus" is the way in.
This is your free gift lot. But as you say, there is a price to accept Jesus into your heart. You have to be sincere, and therefore to make drastic changes in your lifestyle, such as recognising what is divinely ordained as "sin", and NOT living in "sin". And there's another kettle-of-fish ! What counts as "sin" varies from one Christian denomination to another, and has changed over history.
But your free-gift lot also say that you get a free gift if you don't accept Jesus into your heart - when you die, you get a very, very long holiday in a nasty hot place. So not accepting "dear old Jesus" comes with more than having to make changes in your life, but failure to accept comes ultimately, with a punishment - eternity in hell.
Finally, a person who lives a good, clean, "moral" life, but fails to accept, gets the free post-death trip to hot Hades. The asshole who lives a foul, corrupt, violent and "immoral" life, but accepts "Jesus" at the 11 th hour, gets the free gift of lovely, balmy, fun heaven, (as the reward and part of the "grace"), in an afterlife.
If it's all B.S. we have no need to worry, (and I don't - worry that is).
There are no atheists in terrorist training camps.
