I Just Love Biscuits
The other day someone sent me a cute story called "A Southern Prayer". A man prays to God: "Lord, I hate buttermilk, and Lord, I hate lard, and Lord, I'm not too fond of plain flour. But when you mix them together and put them in a hot oven, I just love biscuits". This story is cute, but it proclaims a great lesson.
In order to get biscuits, one must use the proper ingredients mixed in the proper proportions, and it must be cooked at the right temperature for a specific amount of time. We could say the same about a pie, cake, cookies, or just about any baked goods that you can imagine.
Now, let's make the spiritual application. As everyone understands that to get biscuits, the individual ingredients must be mixed together and prepared under certain conditions to get the desired results. Yet, when it comes to the recipe for salvation, most teach that you get it by only one thing. That one thing is usually faith. They teach faith alone saves. But like the biscuit being made up mostly of flour, you know that with the absence of the other ingredients, you only have flour. Even if you cook it, you still have flour and nothing else.
So, let us examine the ingredients in salvation. All of them are important, and we can be sure that if we leave one out, we will not have the desired results. As mentioned before, you certainly need faith, and like the main ingredient (flour) it is very important. You cannot have a biscuit without flour, and you cannot have salvation without faith. Now we add the second ingredient of repentance, this is likened to the lard. It also is important and cannot be left out. The next ingredient in our recipe is confession. This is the buttermilk of our formula. Now we mix all these together and put them into the oven. This is the step which we call baptism. It is just as vital as any of the other steps. If you mixed the ingredients properly, but failed to bake it at the right temperature you would have a gummy, gooey, distasteful mess. Baptism mixes our faith, repentance, and confession and the final step is to bring the desired result. Romans Six says that when we do this, we arise to walk in newness of life.
Ok, I hope you see where this is heading. No one ingredient is more or less important than the others. It is true that there is more of one than the others, but that does not mean it is more important. We have lots of flour with just a little lard and buttermilk, and of course let us not forget the baking in the oven that produces the desired result.
Until we go through this complete process, we cannot enjoy the blessings that were meant for us to have. In the same way, one cannot enjoy the biscuits until everything is mixed and baked according to the recipe. In the same way, one cannot be saved until they have completed the entire process of God's formula.
Follow God's recipe, and you can enjoy salvation. Listen to the doctrines of men, and you may have something, but it will not produce salvation, and it will not be enjoyable. This is plain ole common sense being used to make this application. Learn from the Divine recipe book, the Bible. Follow the instructions, and you can enjoy eternal life and many blessings.
By Carey Scott

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