Ticket Theology

Last week, driving home from somewhere, my thoughts turned to my writing; more importantly, what to write about. Usually, when I get this temporary writers block, I go back to basics Grace and salvation. In my thoughts, I came up with an analogy (something I have never been really good at).

Salvation is like waiting in line for tickets to the “Best Concert Ever!” Why are people in line? The want tickets to the show…some wait days in line so they can get the best tickets. There are those who KNOW somebody and already have the best tickets; there are some that get ticket given to them for answering the right question or doing something goofy as part of a radio promotion or raffle.

Interesting analogy to say the least but it has one humongous flaw. As humans we already have a Grace ticket. That ticket was filled out in our name when Jesus sacrificed his life for ours. Our tickets were bought and paid for at Calgary. We just need to accept the ticket! But that’s not the real flaw….

The flaw is “Ticket Theology.”

People with ticket theology think that the only thing that is important in the Christian life is salvation. They rarely think about real discipleship, they just want their ticket. They want to avoid hell and go to heaven without ever considering whether they will be happy in heaven. I might say that if you don’t like living for God here, you’re not going to get the full benefits there.

Ticket theology trivializes the Christian life. This kind of thinking reduces the Christian life down to some kind of spiritual fire insurance. It turns the Christian experience into a recipe: “Say this and you will be saved,” or “Pray this prayer and you will be forgiven.” It is very important that we are saved by grace. The Bible does say, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast.”

Many people stop reading there and forget the next verse: “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:8-10).

We cannot save ourselves by our good works, and whenever we think God owes us heaven because we have been better than most people then we are in trouble. But there is more to the Christian life than just being “saved by grace.”

What is the point of being a Christian?

1.      It is developing a relationship with God and living for him.

2.      It is the decision to no longer live for ourselves or our pleasures and interests, and to give our lives totally to God. It is falling in love with God and his ways.

3.      It is discovering life as we become closer to him and learn his will for our lives on a daily basis. It is coming alive to joy and the fullness of what we were created for.

4.      t is so much more than just having our sins forgiven.

5.      It is growing every day in our relationship with God and learning to be faithful to him as we mature as his disciples.

6.      It is developing our relationships with other Christians and becoming a part of the family of God.

Maybe you think you have your ticket, but you have never entered into the kind of life that mirrors the life of Jesus. What good is the ticket if you never walk into the concert? And what you discover as you walk into the concert hall is that you are not there to be entertained, you are supposed to take your place on the stage and become one of the performers. You are to live out on that stage what it looks like to be a person who follows Jesus so well that others want to join you and become a part of the concert themselves.

Don’t just grab a ticket and wait…hop up onto the stage and let’s show all what it’s really like to have a ticket!