If you ask most people who go to church, how it is that they know they are saved, they would have a variety of different answers. They might say that they believe they are going to heaven because they go to church regularly. Perhaps they might say that it is because they pray and read their Bible.
Many people misapply what a Christian does for what a Christian is. Praying, reading the Bible, attending church and giving of your tithe are all things that a Christian should do, but they are not what makes someone a Christian.
According to the Bible, a person is saved and going to heaven when they have received Jesus as their Lord and Savior. What makes someone a Christian is Jesus. It is not what a person does, but what they believe that causes them to be acceptable to God.
How do you know you are save: The short answer is: Because Jesus Christ was crucified and rose from the dead.
Everyone loves to hear that “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son.” People love to hear how much God loves them, but not many enjoy hearing at what price they were saved.
The doctrine that is missing in the church today is the total depravity of man. The fact that every person is a lost sinner with no hope of eternal life apart from the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
The church of the last days is afraid of offending those who attend their services by telling them that they are sinners in need of a Savior.
I read an article recently that said that the mega churches which attract so many thousands of young people are in fact making them into “pretend Christians”. The youth come because of the entertaining youth programs that the church offers, but the young people who attend leave with empty souls.
The youth of today are coming to church in greater numbers that ever before, but they are not learning about their sin and the Salvation that was won for them at so great a cost. Instead young people hear about their self worth and how much they are loved. It is important that people know how much God loves them, but also how much it cost Jesus to express the love of God to us.
When we tell someone how much they are loved by God without telling them the mechanics of how that love came into being, we are only telling a partial truth. There would have been no love without the author of love dying. There is no forgiveness without the pain that Jesus felt on His Cross. There can be no forgiveness without sincere repentance and there is no eternal life without complete surrender.
“For God so loved the world…” is a foundational truth. But what of the remainder of that verse: “That He gave His only Begotten Son.”
Indeed we are greatly loved, but that love came to us and was so vividly expressed by the “Giving of a Son”. Let us not forget that when we received forgiveness, it was because a Father who had a Son that He loved more than anything, gave Him for us as a ransom for our sins.
If a person believes that they are basically good and that God should love them because they are worthy of His love, they have missed a very important truth of what Jesus has done. When Jesus came for us and died, it was because there was no hope for us unless He died. Had Jesus chosen to not come to earth and live 33 1/3 years on the earth as a man who never sinned a single time, not one person would have ever made it to heaven.
Jesus was tempted in every single area that each one of us are tempted, yet he never gave in to a single sin. Had he committed just one sin, you and I would still be in our sins and have no hope of eternal life. Can any one of us imagine just how hard this must have been for Jesus to live a perfect life?
Some people have mistakenly believed that the perfect life Jesus lived was easy for Him because He is the Son of God. This is not true. Jesus was 100 percent human just like you and I. It was just as hard for Jesus to resist sin and temptation as it is for each one of us. It was the knowledge Jesus had, that if He gave way to even a single sin, He would not have been able to offer His life up as a perfect sacrifice, that encouraged Him to remain sinless.
How thankful are you today that Jesus had the strength of will to resist sin so that you could have eternal life? Are we thankful enough to resist sin now ourselves and live a life that is worthy of His great sacrifice?
It should be the greatest motivation of our life to avoid sin now because we love and appreciate what Jesus has done for us. The price of eternal life was so high that no one could pay it. The gap between the righteousness of God and the sin of man was so wide that there was no good work that a man could do to bridge it.
It took the perfect life of the Creator of all things to be sufficient enough to meet the requirements of removing all the sins of every person.
I do not understand why someone would think that by following a particular church or a person that they could find their way to heaven. All churches are flawed, all men are flawed. The requirement of God was a perfect life. No man has ever even come close to living a perfect life other than Jesus Christ.
Buddha Mohamed, Krishna, were just sinful men like all men. They not only could not save themselves, but they do not have the power of a perfect life to save anyone else.
The Mormon church, the Jehovah’s Witness church, Scientology, and all other organizations which preach salvation by adherence to their organizations rules or laws are also flawed. If a person could be saved and obtain heaven by a work that they could perform, then Jesus would not have needed to come to earth.
The fact that God took such extreme measures to send His only Son to Die on a Cross is forever the evidence as to just how severe man’s problem was. Nothing else could remedy man’s sin problem except that God would die for us to satisfy the requirement that He made from the beginning. “The soul that sins will surely die…”
To satisfy the righteous requirement of God’s justice, a death had to occur. Only Jesus death meets the requirements set forth by God who made all laws.
So why do so many put their trust in mere men or an institution of man? Because it appeals to the pride of men to put forth a principle that if a man does a certain work he can be acceptable to God. The entire point of the Book of Romans is that step by step throughout the entire sixteen chapters of Romans, God is eliminating all the excuses of man.
Nothing that man could do could make him righteous except to just believe in what Jesus had already done as the basis for salvation. God will not be in debt to any man. He will not permit any person to stand before Him in heaven and proclaim that they had anything to do with their own salvation. To be able to do so would rob God of all the glory that He deserves. God will not share His glory with any man. To allow a man to be able to boast that he made it to heaven because he had done something on earth would be to give him some of God’s glory.
God requires complete repentance of all sins, a turning to Him for salvation and a belief that Jesus is the only answer to their sin problem. If a person is not willing to acknowledge these things, there is no possibility of salvation or of ever making it to heaven.
If on the other hand, a person does fall at the feet of Jesus and proclaim that they are a hopeless sinner and acknowledge that they believe that Jesus died for their sins and was raised on the third day as proof of His sacrifice being acceptable to God, then they have eternal life at that very moment.
God has made eternal life so easy for anyone to have. But they must come the way that He has prescribed or they cannot come at all. If a person dies and does not make it to heaven it will be their own fault not God’s. He gave up everything to make sure that each person who has been born into this world as a sinner, could have their record of sin purged and removed forever.
I pray that if you have read these words and have not yet come to Jesus and believed on Him for your eternal life, that you would do so right now. There is a very simple prayer that anyone can pray and if they believe the words to this prayer in their heart, God will hear and He will forgive you and give you everlasting life.
“Father, I come to you in Jesus name. Please forgive me for all of my sins. I am a sinner Lord and I need your to save me. I believe that Jesus died for me and paid the price I owed for my sins. I believe that Jesus was raised back to life after being dead for three days and that by believing in His death and resurrection I am saved. Please come into my heart Jesus and live Your life through me. I surrender my life to you as Lord of my life and I will live for you for the rest of my life…”
“I pray these things in the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen”
If you prayed that simple prayer, according to the authority of the Bible, the Word of God, all of your sins are forgiven and you have eternal life right now.
Find a group of other Christians who believe these things and who attend a church where they will teach you all of the Bible and believe that it is the Word of God. Read your Bible every day and talk to the Father in Jesus name everyday. Build a strong and personal relationship with Jesus by gaining more and more knowledge of Him from the Bible. When you sin as you will, come to God in faith and just confess your sin to Him and ask His forgiveness. Every time you do this you will be forgiven no matter how many times you commit the same sin. Tell everyone you meet about Jesus and what you learned about how they can also have their sins forgiven and obtain eternal life.
Watch for the return of Jesus as He is coming again any day now. Be gracious and forgiving to everyone you meet. Refuse to gossip or speak negative about anyone. Give to the poor, support your pastor, church and missions to other countries with your money. Remember that everything you have is a gift from God and all of it belongs to Him. You are only a steward of all that you have and someday Jesus will ask you to give an accounting for all He gave you and how you used it for Him and His kingdom.
May the Lord bless you as you continue to follow Jesus with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength.
Rob Robinson
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