Salvation Is Free

[Traveler]

I grew up one of 6 sons of a very wealthy man but I did not know of my father’s wealth until I was an adult. He was not always rich. He was one of 14 children of a sheep herder. He grew up very poor. He once told me wealth is free - it is poverty and debt that is expensive. He used one of his downtown properties to demonstrate. I remember when he bought it. It was rundown and falling apart and hardly considered worth anything. We had to work long and hard to fix it up. I fell through the roof when we were taking it down to repair it. It was rotten and just gave way beneath me.

After we fixed it up, the front was used for offices and there were apartments in the back. We tore out the diseased trees and weeds in the back lot and paved it. There was a old barn garage thing at the way back that had to be repaired. We did all the work as a family. Later my father told me that every penny he put into the property payed itself back the first year. Before we finished fixing the old barn garage a man rented it as a small warehouse for his business. Downtown business rented parking on his paved property so they could park close to their business that more that paid for the paving. He told me that not only was that property free to him but it had paid for itself over 4 times by time the city came with emanate domain, took the property from him to expand the telephone building and paid him 8 times what he had bought the property for in the first place.

My father told me many times he loved to work. He said he never worked for the money - he just liked making thing better. That is his joy in life - the benefits from work he considered free to him. With all his wealth he never bought a new car or a big house. He never felt he was worth expensive things or deserved them. He never worked for opulence. He worked to help others and out of the joy of working. For all the wealth he accumulated he says it came to him for free. He says he never paid for anything even the people he helped he says have paid him back in many ways more that double and he is really in their debt. But then he never lived in real debt. He paid cash for the house I grew up in and every home he has owned. The home we lived in was rebuilt while we lived in it and a basement apartment paid him back more than he paid for the house while we lived there. Much of the food we ate was grown in a garden and our fruit trees and we raised our own chickens for meat and eggs. He also told me living does not cost much - we can live for almost nothing if we are willing to work a little. It is laziness, greed and selfishness that is expensive and robs us of our heritage. Why do so many people insist on being poor when it is so expensive and wealth is free?

I think of salvation like my father’s wealth. Everything we do and every commandment we keep we are paid back many times for in blessings and benefit. Everything the L-rd ask of us is for our development and righteous prophet and eternal treasure. Every good thing we do is paid back to us many fold. It is impossible to do any thing for G-d that we do not receive the greater benefit for it.

I have heard some say salvation is free to those that believe regardless of what they do, as if what a person does has no impact on true happiness and joy. How can they think they believe in G-d and not find joy in doing everything G-d ask of them? How can they think they believe in G-d and say it is not necessary to be obedient to G-d? How can they criticize those have found joy in G-d’s service and do so without regard for self? Salvation, like my father’s wealth, is free but not to those whose laziness, greed and selfishness has convinced them that salvation is all about their exaltation and their reward. For some their eternal reward will be more than even G-d can afford, which greatly pains me - the best of eternal treasures are as free as my father’s wealth was to him.

I know a man and his wife that inherited a great fortune that they have squandered and now in their sunset years they must live on the graces of their children (social security is not good enough) - and they claim their children are selfish with their money and are not thankful at all for their children taking care of them, they want more.

Salvation is free - It’s damnation that is so darned expensive.

The Traveler

[Guest Syble]

This is so well put forth. What a marvelous lesson your father lived.

This perfectly teaches the principle of taking no thought for what you will eat etc. found in Matt. 6. We do not have to chase after what we need if we seek first the Kingdom of God and His RIGHTEOUSNESS. Your father lived this principal looking to help others and not seeking his own.

[Christos]

I agree, a most excellent lesson.

Of course salvation is not free, it is only free to us. For us God sent the most important and expensive thing ever, his only Son which we out of our arrogance and disbelief crucified to a cross.

When I watch the passion of the Christ I always have a slight fantasy that Caiaphas is going to keep his mouth shut and that they would vote to have Jesus released. :)

of course that would almost remove the entire point of Jesus' life.

[LionHeart]

That is amazing. I never thought of it that way. I always believed that the Lord operated on successful principles but I never imagined selflessness as being one of the highest ones. It is quite interesting to compare success in business with success in life and the fact that if the right principles are applied, it will lead to success in both.

[Traveler]

That is amazing. I never thought of it that way. I always believed that the Lord operated on successful principles but I never imagined selflessness as being one of the highest ones. It is quite interesting to compare success in business with success in life and the fact that if the right principles are applied, it will lead to success in both.

You bring up a point about success in business I really had not thought about before. I have met a number of successful business men that I consider in ways like my father but they have always been the owner or the business. It seems that success in the corpert world is based or selfishness and greed (if you have ever watched the TV show "Apprentist").

The Traveler