Close is not Enough

For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; —Romans 3:23

While my wife an I were getting some R&R at a river-side cabin recently, there was a place to pitch horse-shoes.  I hadn’t played horse-shoes in years, so I thought I’d check it out.  To my surprise, I threw a ringer within a few tosses.  However, most of my tosses landed away from the horse-shoe stake.  But, the nice thing about the game of horse shoes is you don’t have to toss a ringer to get points. The game is really about “closeness.” If you toss a horse shoe within a certain distance of the stake, you could get points.

But not so with salvation.

An accountant answered an advertisement for a top job with a large firm. At the end of the interview, the chairman asked, “One last question—what is three times seven?”

The accountant thought for a moment and replied, “Twenty-two.”

Outside he realized he gave the wrong answer and and concluded he had lost the job. But two weeks later he was offered the job. He asked the chairman why he was hired when he had given the wrong answer.

“You were the closest,” the chairman replied.

Some people have the mistaken idea that God is like the man who conducted the interview. They think it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you’re close to the truth.

Salvation is only found in the Lord Jesus Christ.  Anything else will miss the mark. “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:1).