A Recipe for Success as a Christian

Let’s suppose for a moment, that I were baking a cake, and I asked you to go to the store for me and pick up some eggs, buttermilk, heavy cream, and a pound of Callebaut chocolate, would you then assume that those ingredients are all that goes into a cake? Probably not, in fact, you probably have a pretty good idea, that some of those ingredients I don’t actually need to make a cake, I just need those for this particular recipe. What if I asked you for all-purpose flour, baking powder, vegetable oil, and vanilla? I might be able to make a cake with those ingredients, but it probably wouldn’t be very tasty. More likely, though, you would realize that I already had most of the ingredients I needed for the recipe that I was using. (By the way, I don’t carry around cake recipes in my head, the one that I used for this illustration can be found here.)
Sometimes people get hung up on the idea that in various places in the gospels, Jesus told one person that they had to one thing to be saved, but told another to do something else. Keep in mind that Jesus knew what state each of those people were in. He knew, so to speak, which individuals had flour, milk, eggs, vanilla, baking powder, or vegetable oil. He was telling them what they needed, and, in some cases, He was telling them one thing, knowing that it would lead to other things. In Luke 7, there is a beautiful story about Jesus being invited to dinner at the home of a Pharisee named Simon, but, a woman, whom Simon didn’t approve of, followed Jesus in. After some discussion, Jesus tells the woman that her faith has saved her. In Luke 8:12, Jesus, in explaining the parable of the sower, says that the wayside represents people that hear the Word, but don’t accept it, lest they “…believe and be saved,” which would imply that belief is the only ingredient of salvation. That doesn’t necessarily follow, although if one truly believes, there will be other actions that follow from that belief. John 10:9 makes it clear that Jesus is the only way to be saved, but He doesn’t really talk about how to be saved, just that He is the way. Now, in Matthew 10:22, Matthew 24:13, and Mark 13:13, Jesus says that one must endure to the end to be saved. Endure what? Well, reading Matthew 24 and Mark 13, we see that Jesus talks a lot about His followers being persecuted. We have a bad tendency to think that because we live in a country that is predominantly Christian, that was founded on Christian principles, where freedom of religion is the law of the land, that we will never have to endure persecution, but there are those around us who won’t like us living a Christian life, and will give us problems (certainly not to the extent that the early church had problems, but still). Now, Mark 16:16 says, “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.” Now, some people look at that and say, “Oh, but it doesn’t say that he that is not baptized is damned,” but, again, that’s part of a recipe.
In Romans 8:24, Paul tells us that we are saved by hope. Is hope better than faith? Or does hope lead to faith? In Romans 10:9, Paul says, “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” Now Jesus never said anything about confessing Him, should we then ignore what Jesus said and just go by what Paul said? Of course not, but neither should we ignore Paul, either.
What we definitely don't want to do is try to live by part of the Scripture, and ignore the rest. This is not a cafeteria. although I think we all have a tendency to be cafeteria Christians.