What Are You Unwilling to Give Up for Christ and Salvation?

What are you unwilling to part with and lose forever rather than have Christ? What are the things in your life that you find you keep choosing instead of Christ? It’s time to grow up finally, and for once be honest about ourselves and honest with ourselves.

What favorite sins in your life are you unwilling to give up for Christ?

Everyone immediately answers this question with “none”. But is that actually what we see happen? Or instead, do we all have a disposition to justify and rationalize our favorite sins? In our fallen nature, we have an unnatural attachment to sin that we don’t want to give up. It usually starts with venial sins. We excuse ourselves for committing venial sins because they don’t sever our relationship with God and they don’t cut off the sanctifying grace of God from our souls.

This is incredibly dangerous, because venial sins DO wound our souls and wound the relationship with God that we have. As I wrote about in Pride Was The Very First Sin, every time we choose to commit a sin, we are placing ourselves above God. We are placing our wants and desires above Him. We are rejecting God when we choose to sin.

The most dangerous place we can get to is one where we think we can have just a little bit of sin along with having Christ and salvation. This is poisonous thinking that will send your soul to hell. The path to Heaven is narrow, not wide. You must walk along the narrow path and not turn to the side for sin.

Matthew 7:13 “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. 14 For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

Thinking you can have just a little bit of sin along with Christ, His grace and salvation is addressed by St. Paul:

Galatians 5:6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love. 7 You were running well; who prevented you from obeying the truth? 8 Such persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. 9 A little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough.

As St. Paul says above, faith alone will not save you, but faith working through love. You must avoid all sin, even the venial ones and especially the sins that are your favorites. Just a little yeast (venial sin) will change the whole batch of dough. Sin and degeneracy (which is what sin is) never stays in one area of our life and never stays still. It always grows and metastasizes.

What recreation or possessions are we unwilling to give up for Christ?

This one is can be even harder for us to give up than giving up sin. Because things such as possessions and recreation are not intrinsically bad or evil like sin is. These things, in moderation, can even be good things for us. But Jesus warns about this because recreations and possessions can become idols for us that we then place above Christ and replace Christ with them in our hearts.

Luke 14:3 So therefore, none of you can become My disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.

The Church has clarified that this teaching of Christ does not mean that every follower of Christ must live a life of poverty. What it means is that we must forsake all possessions for Christ, and if any of them hinder with our relationship with Christ and interfere with making Him the King of our lives, then those possessions must be given away or tossed aside.

Examples of this can include sports, exercising, electronics, drinking, socializing, cars, houses, money and a whole host of things and activities. Any one of these things, in and of themselves, are not evil. They can actually be good and wholesome things that allow us to live full and complete lives, as long as we keep them within moderation.

Nothing can come between Christ and our lives. He is King and as such, has dominion over our lives and souls. We cannot place possessions or recreation above Him, ever.

What people in your life are you unwilling to give up for Christ?

What friends or family in your life are you unwilling to separate for God? There are people in our lives that can be constant sources of temptation to us. These people encourage us to commit sin. These people must be addressed and hard lines must be made. You must confront them and tell them that you are choosing to walk the narrow path of God and that you do not want to engage in sin anymore. If they refuse to stop encouraging you into sin, then it is time to cut this person from your life and to stop spending time around them. Avoiding near occasions of sin is paramount to our walk with God.

1 Corinthians 5:33 Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins good morals.” 34 Come to a sober and right mind, and sin no more; for some people have no knowledge of God. I say this to your shame.

This warning is not limited to just friends. It can apply to anyone, including our parents, our children and even our spouses.

Luke 14:26 Whoever comes to Me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be My disciple. 27 Whoever does not carry the cross and follow Me cannot be My disciple

Jesus does not want us to cut off any relationship with friends and family members, except those that interfere with our walk with God and those that tempt us into sin. It is a duty to love our family and friends, but that command is the second commandment from Christ, not the first.

Matthew 22:7 He said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Nothing on earth or under the heavens are greater than God.

We must always keep in mind that God is the center of our lives and our existence. All life itself flows from Him. So we must keep Him as the absolute number one priority in everything, and we must be willing to toss away everything else if it keeps us from Him. Jesus discussed this in a couple of parables. He compared it to a treasure and a pearl of great price.

Matthew 13:44 The Kingdom of Heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

45 “Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; 46 on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

He says that it is worth selling everything you have, giving up everything you own, and forsaking every recreation we have, to obtain this treasure and pearl. He’s not joking around here. He absolutely means it.

Demons use those things you are unwilling to give up as the ransom for your soul. Anything that is too high a price for you to give up, that’s how they will keep you in their grasp and away from God.

There comes a point in every man’s life where he is faced with the question that St. Peter was asked by Our Lord in Matthew 16, “But whom do YOU say that I am?”. That question is being asked of you now. And it will be asked of you every single day of your life until you die.

If Jesus Christ is your Lord, and if He is your King, then you need to act like it. When He gives a command, you need to obey it. That’s a word our culture absolutely abhors. Obey. That’s the one thing we stubbornly refuse to do with God is to obey Him. We want salvation, but on our terms and not His. We want salvation and we want our sin. We want salvation and we want to ignore God and refuse to love Him. We’ve even rejected the New Covenant that Jesus gave His Church. Instead we have created a multitude of competing denominations which claim to have the New Covenant, but have false covenants created by man. And these false covenants always have some escape clause that allows us to commit sin while still being saved.

Reject those false covenants created by man, and accept the actual New Covenant that Christ gave to the Catholic Church. The commands of the New Covenant are simple, but they are not easy. They require you to place everything, including family, friends, recreation, money and toys, below Christ. Our fallen nature doesn’t want that though. We want our idols instead of Christ. We want Jesus to fall in line with our idols, to wait His turn for our attention. We want Jesus to be happy with being given some small token of our time and attention. We want to pretend that WE are the king and Jesus is our servant, who must wait on us and attend to us.

This is the perverse inversion of the demonic. Satan and the demons want you to worship yourself as king of the universe instead of Christ. They will whisper sweet words into your ear that “It’s okay, Jesus knows you love Him, so it’s okay for you to commit this sin”. The demons will tell you that it’s okay to wallow in your sins, but does Christ say that? Well let’s take a look at His words, because He wasn’t subtle at all about this topic:

John 8:11 …Go, and sin no more

Matthew 5:48 Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect.

John 14:15 If you love me, you will keep my commandments

John 14:21 They who have My commandments and keep them are those who love Me; and those who love Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love them and reveal Myself to them.

Matthew 24:12 And because of the increase of lawlessness, the love of many will grow cold. 13 But the one who endures to the end will be saved.

Jesus isn’t joking around here. He’s being absolutely clear and blunt on this topic. If you want to be saved, you must reject sin and run away from it. You cannot have sin and have Christ. So choose wisely, and keep choosing wisely every single day until you die.