50×50
Being a Christian, a follower of Jesus, is not about showing up at church or having your name on a membership roll. It’s about having a pure and honest heart, self-discipline, and love for God and for people.
The trouble is, many Christians never rise to these spiritual heights. Instead, they fall back on the idea of “atonement,” imagining that God puts on rose-colored glasses and simply overlooks their sins.
The real answer is simple, expressed in the rule of 50×50. Human effort alone is never enough for salvation, but it must go far enough. A person has to do everything within their power, and then — halfway along the road — they meet God’s help coming from above, carrying them to the finish line.
This is what Jesus meant when he spoke of the inner work that leads a person into the Kingdom of God within. It has nothing to do with performing outward rituals; it is the inward labor of love.
THE TEACHING OF THE CHURCH
The teaching of the Christian Church is 30% the teaching of the apostles, 30% the theological legacy of the Ecumenical Councils, another 30% its own denominational traditions. And only 10% is Jesus. Yet even that is a shallow portrait: the Church remembers and celebrates His birth, His death, and His resurrection. It remembers the lofty and — by its own unspoken consensus — nearly impossible Sermon on the Mount. And that’s about it. But in reality, the teaching of the Church ought to be 100% the teaching of Jesus.
The teaching of the Church must be 100% the teaching of Jesus — not in scraps of memory, but in the living practice of His words, His deeds, and His spirit. After all, He Himself said: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” — not the councils, not the traditions, not the theological systems.
As long as the Church keeps Jesus only in its holidays and symbols, it loses Him in daily life. Yet daily life is exactly the ground where the Sermon on the Mount is meant to take on flesh.
The Church must not cover up the Gospel with dogmas and traditions, but instead uncover Christ Himself for people. The teaching of Jesus is not an appendix to doctrine — it is the heart of it.
The paradox is this: the Church is called His Body, but it often lives as if it had a different Head altogether.
TWO GOSPELS
The apostle Paul understood the Gospel primarily as the death and resurrection of Christ. “I remind you, brothers and sisters, of the gospel I preached to you… that Christ died for our sins… and was raised on the third day” (1 Cor. 15:1–4).
Jesus, however, preached the Gospel of the Kingdom of God as a message of growth — a transformation of the human soul initiated by God and embraced through faith. In His teaching, the Gospel is not just about what happens after death, but about becoming a different kind of person, more aligned with the very nature of God.
If we focus only on the death and resurrection, the Gospel can look like a one-time ticket to eternity — a pass someone presents at the gate of the “heavenly ark.” The gatekeeper doesn’t examine the person’s life, only the “document of redemption,” and then waves them through. But that is a shallow and incomplete picture. Paul himself insists that believers must turn away from sin and be transformed “into the image of Christ.”
This brings us back to the heart of Jesus’ teaching: the Gospel is about real change, about the inner growth and maturity of the soul, which is essential for salvation. Theological systems may try to harmonize Paul’s emphasis on the cross with Jesus’ call to transformation, but the essence remains the same: the Gospel is about spiritual growth, not just reliance on an official act of atonement.
A person can cling to the death and resurrection at Calvary for a lifetime, but if there is no evidence of growth, of becoming new, then it is all in vain. Most likely, Paul and the apostles framed the message of the Gospel in terms of sacrifice and blood because that was the only way their generation could understand forgiveness. Yet the core of the Gospel can still be summed up like this: “I remind you, brothers and sisters, of the gospel I preached to you… that Christ gave us the Holy Spirit so we might grow, be made whole, and become more and more like Him.”
FAITH IN POSSIBILITY
The Gospel of the Kingdom is a vision of human growth.
Our greatest weakness is disbelief—
the refusal to trust that tomorrow we can be more than today.
We doubt our own strength,
we doubt the boundless strength of God.
So often we only brush against the sacred,
and then slip back into the noise and worries of life.
WE DO NOT KNOW WHO EXACTLY WE WILL BECOME
In Paul’s teaching there is something taken directly from Jesus Himself. The idea is that we grow, and who we become does not depend on our own will, but on what is given to us. This is part of the true, authentic Gospel. Whoever does not grow turns into a dead stone—that is the loss of salvation. But the one who grows is transformed into what is given to him: a beautiful spiritual being who will live through countless billions of ages.
ROME AND THE WORLD
The sacrifice of Christ on Golgotha was intended primarily for the inhabitants of the Roman Empire: it was they who felt its greatest impact. For us today, the crucifixion still speaks volumes, yet what comes to the forefront is the search for the person of Jesus. In a religious sense, what lies ahead for us is an encounter with the living Christ.
TRANSFORMATION
The approach to God is not possible in physical, spatial terms. One can come to God mentally, intellectually, spiritually—that is, through the transformation of the person. This is precisely why Jesus said not to expect the Kingdom of God outwardly, for it is within. For example, imagine you want to catch a radio station’s signal. Simply going up to the antenna and touching it is useless; it will do nothing. What is needed is the ability—or a device—capable of recognizing radio waves. In the teaching of Jesus, spiritual growth itself is the key mechanism for drawing closer to God and receiving salvation.
Follow Jesus Christ 