[S I M T A N]

We are saved by grace through faith, not by works lah!

With Allah, along with the god of Joseph Smith (Mormonism) and Charles Taze Russell (Jehovah's Witnesses), just to name a few, heaven can only be reached by way of works. It makes sense that a god created in their image would require them to work and strive, obey and toil, to earn the forgiveness that eludes them all. Indeed, no one dares to attack these servants of their religions living such a godly life even as they try to produce a righteousness of their own instead of appropriating the righteousness of Christ (Gal 2:21).

Grace isn't something they understand or extend fundamentally. It's a foreign concept that has come to us by way of Jesus who's the embodiment of heaven coming to earth so that the guilty can be declared innocent on the basis of grace and grace alone. He made it so that the only object the undeserving have to offer in exchange for pardon is faith. Arranging salvation this way is incomprehensible, different from the way any other god would set up the way of redemption. "Who is a God like you, who pardons iniquity and passes over the transgression of the remnant of His inheritance - who does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in loving devotion?" (Mic. 7:18)

Justification - the transformation of a sinner into a genuine saint - is intended to make possible a relationship with God, impossible between a sinner and a holy God. Reception of forgiveness is meant to be followed by reception of holiness. Justification is the means, sanctification the end. In every other religion it's the other way round: a holy life must be lived in order to be accepted by God. The good news of the gospel is that God accepts us as we are - in order to live a holy life.

This is the core of what Christianity is all about. The essence of theology is grace, and without an understanding of it we cannot possibly understand what Christianity is.