“Brethren, my heart’s desire and my prayer to God for them [Israel] is for their salvation. For I testify about them that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge.
“For not knowing about God’s righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” (Rom 10:1-4)
Journal,
I felt it would be good to offer a study on the subject of salvation by setting forth why a person cannot be saved by anything they do in their own efforts. Until this truth is realized, the struggle over salvation will always be there. Let’s talk about it.
It is important to understand that being saved has nothing to do with anything we can offer to God. What can a sinful race offer to a holy God? Everything we touch is imbued with sin. Our unsaved hearts are hearts of sinners. The human race is charged with sin, infected by sin, directed by sin, and corrupted by sin.
What can our sinful hands offer to God that would not be an offering of sin? We can offer God nothing. We are bankrupt of any righteousness.
David asked it best:
“What can I offer the LORD for all He has done for me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and praise the LORD’s name for saving me.” (Psa 116:12-13)
And so…
What Can I Offer the Lord
What can we offer God with a view to salvation? What do we sinful creatures have that would be good enough for God to accept us? Again the answer is, nothing.
We can’t clean ourselves up. It is our heart that is corrupt. There is nothing on our part that we can do to be accepted by God. Until we recognize this basic truth, we will never understand what salvation is all about.
Let’s press this further. Nobody prays through to salvation. Fasting and prayer are not issues of salvation. Having uncut hair does not get God’s attention. Whether you drink or smoke has nothing to do with salvation.
Going to movies or not going to movies is not a thing of salvation. No matter what we may think about these things, they have no relationship to salvation itself. No person ever becomes good enough to get saved.
We cannot change the inside by working on the outside. Salvation is about a heart condition. When the heart is made right, everything else will come into place. (In its time.)
We Are Powerless in Ourselves
So let me repeat — We are powerless in ourselves to think that anything good can come from us. Salvation has to come from God Himself. He alone is righteous and without sin. He
alone is good.
Stop and think about what John the Baptist, the Lord Jesus, and the apostles all taught on the issue of salvation. They were addressing a Jewish audience. The Jews hung their hats about being saved on the merits of Abraham.
In dealing with Jewish attitudes, Paul said that the Jews were just as lost as the pagans. Why is that? It is because salvation can only come from God Himself. And the sinful state of Adam had casts its shadow across the whole of humanity.
All unsaved people are under the power and authority of a spiritual being beside God. Satan is actually called the god of this world.
Deadness of Sin
Paul brings out the deadness of sin:
“And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.” (Eph 2:1-3)
Have we nailed this issue down firm enough? Once again, until a person realizes that they cannot be saved by any effort of their own, they will remain stupefied in how to be saved.
What then is the answer? The answer never changes. Salvation is trusting wholly in Christ and in His Lordship. Reading a bit further in Ephesians 2, we hear Paul say this:
“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” (Eph 2:8-10)
The Battle Over Grace
The argument goes this way,
‘That is too easy. Anyone can say they trust in Christ. Where is their experience? Where is their holiness? Where is their separation from the world? Where is their…where is their…where is their…???’
Do you see the problem with the argument of ‘Where is?’
All these responses continue to miss the message of salvation. What then is the central message of salvation?
Listen:
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
“For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.
“He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” (Joh 3:16-18)
Salvation is Through the Son Alone
This is My Beloved Son
Did you catch it? Salvation is through the Son alone. The Son took the place of the human race. The Son took to Himself our separation from God. The Son died in our place.
The Son was judged with our judgment. The Son was declared sin so that we could be declared right before God. The Son resurrected from the dead as a sign that judgment had been met.
The Son entered back into heaven. And the Son is now Lord of all. He is above all. He has all authority in heaven and on earth.
So how then are we saved? We are saved by appealing to the Son. This was the message that Peter preached on the day of Pentecost.
“And it shall be that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord [Jesus] will be saved.” (Act 2:21)
This is the message that the great apostle Paul preached to the Gentiles:
“For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call on Him; for ‘WHOEVER WILL CALL ON THE NAME OF THE LORD [Jesus] WILL BE SAVED.’” (Rom 10:12-13)
The Eternal Law of Salvation
Out of the cross came the eternal law of salvation. It is the one law that Satan hopes no person ever sees clearly. This is why he keeps adding religious ritual to religious ritual, condition upon condition, law upon law, tradition upon tradition, and anything else he can throw into the mix.
Satan knows that any person who calls upon the Lord Jesus Christ with their heart in respect to salvation, will be saved. It is as simple as that.
Satan knows it. We need to know it. We need to be able to preach this simple message of faith in Christ to the harlot, to the beggar, to the drunkard, to the sinner of the deepest cut.
There is no other message that Christians are commissioned to preach. Our job is to preach the message. The message will take care of itself.
The Message Completes Itself
Yes, all the apostles preached the death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, and that faith in Christ as the risen Savior is what salvation truly is. In fact the only witness a person needs to know that they are saved is that they truly believe in their heart that Jesus Christ is their own Lord.
Faith in Jesus Christ itself is the testimony of salvation. This is where many people misunderstand the power of the gospel message.
The message of the cross carries in it the inherent power that accomplishes the work of salvation. The moment a person truly believes, the Holy Spirit enters that person’s heart and places the seal of salvation.
Paul explains in two places the power of the gospel message.
“For this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received the word [gospel message] of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe.” (1Th 2:13)
And again,
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘BUT THE RIGHTEOUS man SHALL LIVE BY FAITH [In Jesus Christ].’” (Rom 1:16-17)
And so, until we truly believe in Jesus Christ, there can be no seal placed on our heart. The seal carries God’s testimony.
“For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, ‘Abba! Father!’
“The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.” (Rom 8:15-17)
Have you received the Spirit of God’s Son in your heart? Listen once again to the witness of salvation.
“For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, ‘Abba! Father!’
“The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.” (Rom 8:15-17)
What Can Take Away My Sins
Some time ago I was asked to take part in a prayer breakfast for a Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial. When it came time for me to offer a prayer, I begin to sing the song, ‘What can wash away my sins.’ I will never forget how singing that song changed the atmosphere of the gathering from political to spiritual.
Are you ready for your heart to change? Perhaps now would be a good time to listen to it.
Jesus loves you,
Buddy
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