[theophilus]

Once three men went on an ocean cruise. One of them was an athlete who was in top physical condition and was a champion swimmer. The second knew how to swim and occasionally exercised but generally didn’t attach much importance to keeping fit. The third was a couch potato who didn’t know how to swim and was too lazy to ever exercise. There were plenty of things they could do on the ship to occupy their time and they became so interested in these activities that they didn’t bother to keep track of where the ship was.

One day when all three of them were on the deck there was an explosion which blew a hole in the hull and the ship suddenly sank. It happened so quickly the men didn’t have a chance to put on life jackets or get into lifeboats. They found themselves floating in the ocean without even any debris which they could grab onto to keep themselves afloat.

The one who couldn’t swim sank right away. The other two began swimming in an effort to reach the safety of land.

Unfortunately they didn’t realize that the nearest land was several hundred miles away. The one who exercized moderately was able to swim for a while but he soon became exhausted and sank. The athlete was able to keep going for a long time and go many miles from the site of the wreck but even he couldn’t make it to land and so he ended up at the bottom of the ocean like the others.

This is a picture of what happens to people who have only their own efforts to rely on for salvation. The couch potato represents those who make no attempt whatever to live a good life. The one who exercised moderately represents the vast majority of people who make some attempt to live right but don’t consider it the most important thing in life. The athlete stands for those who devote their lives to doing good and hope to earn a place in heaven by the way they live. But just as the swimmers didn’t know how far they were from land, many people don’t know enough about God’s standards to know that it is impossible for us to meet them.

If you compare the men with each other there is a big difference between how far each of them swam. In the same way there are big differences in how much good people do in the way they live. But the swimmers all had one thing in common; no matter how well they swam it wasn’t enough for them to reach land. In the same way no matter how well a person lives and how much better he may be than someone else his life can’t measure up to what God requires.

But suppose there was another ship present when the first ship sank. The captain of the second ship saw the men in the water and ordered his crew to throw lifelines to them. Then all they had to do was grab hold of the lines and they would be pulled to safety. In this situation it wouldn’t matter to any of them how well they could swim. In fact they wouldn’t be able to both grab the lifeline and try to swim to safety. They must choose to do one or the other.

This is a picture of the salvation that Christ offers. We all need this salvation equally and it is available to all of us equally. But in order to take advantage of it we must give up any effort to earn salvation by what we do.