Is It Hard to Be Saved?

(The audio version of this sermon has significant content not included in this text version.)

Melissa has known for years her husband has been cheating on her. She has tried everything she can think of to win his loyal affection, but it’s never been enough. Finally, she sat down with a counselor and poured out her story ending with the question, “What can I do to make him love me?”

The answer is: Nothing. You cannot make someone love you. You cannot win the affection of someone who isn’t a lover.

For many of us, this is a picture of our spiritual life. God is like a hard-hearted husband, and we are the desperate woman. We’ve spent years trying to win the approval of a God who is unpleasable. We have desperately longed for a salvation that was always beyond our grasp.

If “salvation” is synonymous with God’s approval, the bad news is, you can never earn it. The good news is, you already have it. The mere fact of being born brings you into God’s favor. God takes pleasure in your existence. Being alive puts you in God’s favor. You cannot earn it which is an unimportant fact since you don’t have to earn it. It’s yours because of who God is.

So is it hard to be saved? Is it hard to earn God’s favor? No.

There are, however, other meanings of the word “saved.”

In Luke 18, Jesus gives sight to a blind man, then says, “Your faith as saved you.” In this story, “saved” equals being healed of blindness.

In Acts 27, “saved” means “not drowning.”

In Matthew 10:22, “saved” means being welcomed into the kingdom of God at the end of the age.

“Saved” means moving from a place of darkness, pain and unease into a place of light, strength and joy. It means moving from miserable chaos to happy order, from guilt to righteousness.

And that is hard. Why? Because to enter the good place God has for us requires us to let go of the place that we now have in our grasp.


Is it hard to lose weight? No. It’s easy. All you have to do is eat fewer calories than you burn.

Try telling that to Bill. He needed to lose a hundred pounds. He spent a fortune on “products” with no noticeable results. He tried four different diet plans. Still one hundred pounds to go. He went to Weight Watchers for a year. Friends prayed over him. Still a hundred pounds too much. He finally had bariatric surgery. He’s hoping this will make the difference.

So is losing weight hard or easy? It depends on whether you are asking a biological or human question. Biologically losing weight is easy. If Bill was a rat, we could put him in a cage, decrease the available calories until the net effect of his eating and metabolism produced the proper weight. However, you ask the human question: Is weight loss easy or hard, the answer is that losing weight is the hardest thing Bill has ever attempted.

If salvation means moving from a dangerous place to a safe place, salvation is hard. Just ask Bill.

Years ago, visited a water park with a group of kids. Following some of my kids, I climbed the steps to the top of a water slide. When I finally reached the top and looked down, I froze. I would have simply climbed back down but the stairs were full of kids. I scrunched over to the side and allowed several kids to go past me as I tried to work up my courage to let go. The slide appeared to drop straight down. I was terrified. My rational mind insisted it could be dangerous. The water park’s insurance policy would not tolerate anything that was truly death-dealing. However, to my eyes it appeared that I was looking down at certain death.

I looked longingly at the beautiful blue pool at the bottom of the slide. That’s where I wanted to be. Now, was it easy to get there? If you are asking a physics question, the answer is an unequivocal yes. All I had to do was let go. Gravity would take of the rest and within a second or two I would be out of torment resting in the pleasant lagoon at the bottom of the slide.

However, if you ask a human question, getting to the bottom of the slide was agonizingly difficult.

It’s this kind of appreciation for the human condition that lies behind the stories and statements in the Bible that describe salvation as “hard.” It is hard, because it involves us letting go of what we possess, letting go of the place where we are and yielding to forces greater than ourselves. This is scary and difficult.

If God said otherwise, we would justifiably disbelieve him.

In Matthew 7, Jesus exhorts his disciples: Strive to make it through the narrow gate. The way to destruction is wide and easy. The way to life is narrow and hard.

Hebrews 12:14 reads, “Make every effort to live in peace and to be holy.” “Effort” by definition is hard, strenuous, difficult, contrary to ease and relaxation.

These passages do not tell us that God is the frowning, never-to-be-pleased authority, scrutinizing our performance for damnable errors. Rather they are the realistic coaching that is called for by the human condition.

This “human condition” is not necessarily “evil.” That is, our resistance to “salvation” to a move from a place that is less ideal to a better place is not necessarily rooted in rebelliousness or greed or hatred or lust. Rather, by “human condition” I refer to the natural condition of all things to remain as they are. Doing something new requires effort whether that something new is adopting an exercise program, quitting smoking, starting a daily time of prayer, getting baptized, practicing gratitude or using a new calendar program. When you add to inertia other elements of the human condition–sinfulness, weakness, ignorance–then it is really obvious why getting “saved,” i.e. moving into the fullness of life God intends for us is hard.


These Bible passages (and others) offer assurance that when we find yielding to God, cooperating with God, obeying God difficult, we have not come across evidence of some bizarre root of evil in us. Rather, these passages assure us that we are right where God expected us to be. Struggle and effort are normal elements in righteous living. They are inescapable elements of holy, healthy, happy living.

One of the reasons we go to church is encourage one another to keep on with the struggle. We are not alone. We are not freakish in our discovery that doing right is difficult. We are part of the family of God. Together we celebrate the wonderful news that we already enjoy God’s favor. We celebrate the growth and positive movement in our lives. We lament together our failings and stumblings, then assure each other that the narrow gate is still reachable. The skinny road is still walkable. Ahead, through the skinny gate, we see the broad smile of God, cheering his children on.