Easier to be Saved?

So here’s a question: is it easier to be saved or to be lost? Well, what doth inspiration say? “Come unto Me,” Christ invites, “all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30).

Or what about this one? “The way of the unfaithful is hard” (Proverbs 13:15). And this one, which the Lord said to Paul (when he was actually Saul), “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads” (Acts 26:14). Or this one, “But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more” (Romans 5:20).

Or what about this one, written a few millennia after the Bible: “The sinner may resist this love, may refuse to be drawn to Christ; but if he does not resist he will be drawn to Jesus” (Steps to Christ, p. 27). Thus, the way a person is saved is to simply stop resisting the drawing of Jesus. To be lost means that a person has to swim in the opposite direction of the strong current of God’s drawing grace.

“But what a minute,” you say, “Hold on! Time out! Doesn’t the Bible teach us that we are to ‘enter through the narrow gate’ and that ‘wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it?’ ” Yes, indeed, it does. In fact, Jesus says this Himself. But in this statement, He is not speaking to the “hardness” or “easiness” of being saved. He is simply saying that the road to destruction is wide and there will be many people who take it (simply saying that a road is wider or narrower does not speak to its ease in traveling it).

Interestingly, Ellen White also addresses this very passage elsewhere: “Do not therefore conclude,” she writes, “that the upward path is the hard and the downward road the easy way. All along the road that leads to death there are pains and penalties, there are sorrows and disappointments, there are warnings not to go on. God’s love has made it hard for the heedless and headstrong to destroy themselves” (Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing, p. 139).

So what’s the catch? Why will so many be lost and so few be saved? Simply because they have not believed the Lord’s promises to them. They have not appreciated His Cross and His sacrifice. They will spend most of their lives swimming against the current of His grace.

May it not be said of us!