Salvation Comes by Faith - Not by Good Works - Even that of Kings

Submitted by M. Tovey (United States), Jun 22, 2009 at 12:53

The Book of Esther tells a part of the Jewish experience in a compelling way, placing a person of faith from an ordinary situation, such as Esther, into an extraordinary one. Esther's relationship with the king brings blessing to the king during this time with Esther, but he did not come to a common level of belief with her.

That he did right by the Jewish people came not as a personal level of belief in her Almighty God as Savior, but as a man who developed a special bond with his replacement queen and deigned to respond to her as a man in love. His demise against the Greeks is a validation of a main Biblical principle, that good works without faith may have temporal rewards, but there is no eternal salvation by the good works of mankind.

The reason the Persian king did not have the help of the Almighty God of Esther and Mordechai is that he did not have a believing relationship with that same Almighty God in order to rely upon his help. For if he did, then the Holy Bible would have been complete in making that reference.

The peace that he did get for sparing the Jewish population in his kingdom was for the sake of the Jewish people, and not his regular subjects. Only by fear of the repercussions of violating the second order did the king's non-Jewish people not execute the first order to destroy the Jewish subjects. Toleration by fear then became the order of the day until the Greeks came to town.

We come back to the central premise of how salvation may be obtained, that had the Persian king come to a believing relationship, then there would have been salvation for him and his subjects who may have believed as well. As for a Christian being a better person than anyone else, the Holy Bible says that all have sinned (no matter the level of sin –whether murder, rape, or ???) and the need for a relationship to Almighty God through Jesus Christ is required to enter into His eternal Kingdom, a believing Christian's only advantage.

A person who claims to be Christian without having the true relationship has no better chance (though maybe a worse one for the hypocrisy of making such a claim without the truth of it) than someone who follows a different theology, such as Islam or another, so much so that good works without the saving relationship with Jesus Christ will not get anyone into the heaven promised by Jesus Christ in the Holy Bible.

It will be pointed out here that it would be very difficult to find too many people who have committed their lives to Jesus Christ to have committed the crimes alluded to by the previous supposition. But Jesus did say that sinners who have believed would get in before pious people who have not believed according to His WORD. On that point, Jesus Christ gave His life to pay that sin debt for all who have believed.

Now if there are regards for the need for a personal Savior, then it is only a belief away to pray for the Holy Spirit to lead one to the truth, that Jesus Christ is indeed the Savior, having paid the death penalty for sin, and being risen again for the justification for all who believe. It is not human logic that dictates this, so it is impossible to debate it on a human level. As such, it is faith that is required to comprehend why this is so and why someone who believed a different theology cannot understand it without knowing Jesus Christ on a personal level.

That is why a true Christian will send the witness to seek Jesus Christ in prayer to take it to a different level. There is no other means to provide the explanation.

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