Salvation

I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given to you by Christ Jesus, that you were enriched in everything by Him in all utterance and all knowledge, even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you, so that you come short in no gift, eagerly waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will also confirm you to the end, that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. 1 Corinthians 1:4-9

God doesn't exchange any of your good deeds for His salvation.

God is not a man that He should barter with us, nor does He need anything we could offer Him. God gives us salvation because it pleases Him to do so. Everything comes from the gift of God, and His gift is not lacking in anything. The faithful gift that we are given is fellowship with God through Jesus Christ. He gives it to us because we could never earn enough to buy it. We are lacking in nothing because God gives us salvation and everything else we could ever need. We can eagerly await God’s promise to make us blameless, which He procured through Jesus’ birth, death, and resurrected life. We cannot pay God, He pays off the debt we owe Him and then restores our freedom to us.

God saves you. You can't save yourself by good work or anything.

Our good work aren’t good enough to save us, God had to come down to us to offer us salvation (Romans 5:8). If we tried to put together enough good works to try to earn salvation, we would always come up short, but there is no shortage with God. Everything that enriches our life comes from the grace of God because He has no end to the riches of His grace. Good works are our thank you gift back to God as we respond to the fellowship we are called into. On the day we become blameless, we will become a perfect conduit of God’s grace gift to us and our return gift to God. 

There is no special place in hell for those who are extra bad. There is no special place in heaven for those who are extra good.

Heaven is a wonderful place for all those who have accepted God’s gracious gift to pay for the debt we all owe God. Hell is a horrible place for those who hate God and would rather pay for things on their own than accept anything from God. The debt we owe God is infinite, and He doesn’t accept partial payments. If we accept God’s infinite payment for our debt there is no bonus points we can earn by attempting to over pay on our debt. God is the only One who can pay for the debt of our sin, no amount of good works can earn God’s grace.  God offers us salvation because He wants to. When we accept His gracious offer to pay the debt of our sins, we are restored to the blameless position we were created to be in (we still have to live in the world broken by sin, , but we don’t have to live in guilt).