The Best Recipe

John 8:31, John 3:16

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There’s a little boy who went up to his mom one day and said, Mom, I want to make cookies with you. She said, OK. So she gets all the things out. She gets her cookie recipe out. She starts to pull out the flour, and the little boy says, No, mom, I don’t want to put flour in these cookies. I want to put dirt in them. So the mom says, OK, I guess we can try dirt. So they instead of cups of flour, they add cups of dirt.

When the time comes to add the sugar, the little boy says, no, no, no, no, mom, I want to add sand instead of sugar. The mom said, fine, let’s add some sand. And so he dumps in the cups of sand. This little boy then mixed everything up and he puts the cookies into the oven.

How do you think they were going to turn out? Obviously not very well. They were a far cry from anything we would call a cookie, and he would have been very disappointed in the end for not following the recipe the way it should have been.

This is similar to what a lot of people do with God’s recipe for salvation. They want to substitute out the things that God has said and add their own things, add their own ideas, add their own wants to it. But that’s never going to work out. Jesus himself emphasizes this in John, chapter 8, verse 31.

So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, if you remain in my word, you are really my disciples. You will also know the truth and the truth will set you free. (John 8:31)

Cling to his word, remain in his word, abide in his word. We want to follow his word because we know the outcome is glorious. It’s good. We hold to the fact that Jesus tells us we repent of our sins. We turn to him in faith and he declares to us that our sins are forgiven, that he covers us in the righteousness that he earned. He went to the cross and there he forgave all of our sins. Our guilt is washed away. All we have to do is trust in him.

What a great recipe that is. What a great outcome that will be. So that should be encouragement for us as we look at God’s word that we don’t change it up, that we don’t take away or add to it, but we stick with what Jesus has laid out here for us and for our salvation. As we are also told and John 3:16

God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)

God’s recipe is the best recipe. It brings eternal life to you and to me. That’s what we hold to. That’s what we cling to. That’s what we will abide in. God’s peace be with you.