What is necessary to become saved?

xdisciplex your same question is asked and answered in Acts 16:30-31. And the direct answer to the direct question is "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved"

The good news that makes one alive spiritually is so simple a child can understand it. That message is believe on the shed blood of Jesus as the Lamb of God slain to pay the penalty of sin on your behalf.

Believe and you are saved. Why Christendom has wanted to complicate that message is beyond me. Believe on Jesus and you will be saved.

John the Baptist was preaching a different aspect of the good news message. He was preaching repentance in relation to the kingdom. Because Christendom has misunderstood these two distinct aspects of the good news you get and kinds of different twists on salvation by grace through faith, because people start trying to cram verses that don't speak to salvation by grace and they force them to speak of it and subsequently they have come up with the strange additions to grace through faith.

The message is so simple let's keep it as simple as God intended it to be. Believe on Jesus and you will be saved.

Hope that helps.

 

...or perhaps repentance really is a part of what is involved in being saved by grace through faith; and that salvation and God's kingdom are indeed intimately related, as those who are ultimately saved are the same ones who get to enter God's kingdom.

 

If repentance was needed for salvation by grace through faith, then why doesn't Ephesians 2 include it? Why doesn't it say that grace is through faith and repentance? Why doesn't Acts 16 include repentance when the direct question was asked?

What does God require to cover sin? It's death and shed blood (Exodus 12) and nothing else. Jesus died and shed His blood and if one believes in His substitutionary death then one is saved. It really is that simple.

The message of salvation by grace through faith and the kingdom are intimately related, but related and equal are different.

One must be saved by grace through faith before one can understand the word of the kingdom. John 3 tells us that one must be born again before one can even see the kingdom, but one must be born of water and spirit to enter the kingdom. Seeing and entering are two separate and distinct things.

Not everyone that sees the kingdom (saved) will enter the kingdom.

 

Do you have faith in God xdisciplex? If so..tell us about your faith.
Do you trust Him as your Lord? If so..tell us why you now trust in Him and call Him Lord.
Do you worship the only true God xdisciplex? If so...tell us how you worship God and how often you worship.


This I think will help in your understanding.

If you show Bible verse to back this...this will help even more.



In Christ..James

 

no-one can be saved without repentance. cannot have forgiveness without repentance. if no forgiveness. then hell.

Jesus said "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!"

yah. we do need repentance for us to be saved.
one can go to church, do all the church activities, praise the Lord all their life, have a christian ministry... and still not be saved.

"many will say 'Lord, Lord' and I will say to them 'depart from me, ye workers of iniquity' "

workers of iniquity and still saved? which means we cannot be saved without repentance of our sin.

 

Regeneration precedes conversion. The Holy Spirit regenerates and subsequent conversion is a recognition of a done deal.

 

Gekko "repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" is not the message of salvation by grace through faith. Salvation by grace through faith and the kingdom message are not equal. They are two different messages.

 

This has been debated for sometime and I'm sure we will not end the debate here.

I think we get clearer idea of salvation when we understand what we are saved from. Many have the idea we are saved from Hell. I feel this is the wrong view. God sent His Son so that we can be saved from sin. With this in mind, we understand that repenting is very much part of salvation.

When we say we are placing our trust in Christ, we are saying that Christ is our only hope to remove our guilt we have because of sins and also because of our sin nature. It is with this understand we take on Christ and TURN from our sins and walk in the light of His sheed blood. This is not saying we will never sin again. We in fact will. This is showing that our trust in God comes from our heart, and not just to escape Hell.

Ask any one if they want to burn in Hell. No one wants to do this. Ask the same people if they want to be saved from their sins...MOST of mankind does not. Man likes the thrills of sin and will hold on to them as long as he can. They think they can escape "LATER", after they sin a little. This shows not heart for God.

Again, do not confuss this with.."if I stop sinniing I go to heaven. No this is works. Grace is..I can not stop sinning, so I place my faith in God and believe His Blood will take away my sins.

The goal is to remove sins...there by remove guilt...there by...be with God. To do this, we MUST have a heart which wants to repent from our sins.


In Christ..James

 

Sunday night, one of my middle schoolers mentioned that she hadn't been baptized.

"Am I going to Hell?" she asked.

"Depends," I answered. "Do you believe that Jesus died for your sins?"

"Yup."

"Do you believe He rose from the dead?"

"Yup."

"Have you put your faith in Him as Lord and Savior?"

"Yup."

"You're not going to hell."

"Cool."

 

Tragic,

Very succinct


You all know I am a great Romans 10:9-10 proponent...

But, repentance is (also) a critical part of being, if not becoming a Child of God...

Acts 2:38 Peter replied, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Acts 3:19 Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord;

Acts 11:18 When they heard these things, they held their peace, and glorified God, saying, Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life.

Acts 17:30 And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent:

Acts 26:20 But shewed first unto them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of Judaea, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance.

Romans 2:4 Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?

2 Corinthians 7:10 For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.

2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

Please note that from previous discussion Repentance is primarily agreeing with God that you are a sinner, and that your are guilty and need His forgiveness...

Also, that repentance does not neccesarily say that success against sin has been already won...

No, for many it is but the declaration of war against the Lusts of the Flesh, The Lusts of the Eyes, and the Pride of Life...

But, not to be too worried... It is a battle we can easily win...

Philipians 4:13 I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.

Mike Sr.

[ May 01, 2006, 08:11 PM: Message edited by: SpiritualMadMan ]

 

J. Jump,

To believe on Jesus you must believe who he is and what He did for us on the Cross. If one is not willing to forsake sin is there really belief?

 

Absolutely. If they believe Jesus died for them to pay the penalty for sin they are saved. Done deal.

Now granted most of the time people make the decision to turn from sin at the same time they place their faith in Christ's sacrificial death. But God does not require repentence in order for one to be saved by grace through faith. If He did then He would have said so in Ephesians 2:8,9 and Acts 16. But He didn't, so we must not either.

That doesn't mean that we don't teach it, because repenting of sin and obedience is absolutely crucial to the sanctification process. But that is different than salvation by grace through faith.

 

J. Jump, my ongoing teaching reflects the neccesity of repentance and living a Godly life. In fact, right now we are looking very seriously at the Sermon on the Mount as an example of Jesus' hard teachings.

Middle school/Jr. High kids tend to go off-subject a lot; hapily one can generally pull good lessons off of the rabbit trails we go down.

 

Listening to the Gospel is the basic thing as it tells us that everything was done already at the Cross.
Many people say that they believe all the sins were forgiven at the Cross, then later on when we come to the daily sins which we commit, they say that they have to repent and ask God for the forgiveness again, which means the meaning of the forgiveness which the person confessed was limited to the sins of the past. This is why there is no change of the life even though some people confess the salvation or being born again.

Jesus said about the fruits which prove whether the tree is good or not.
Salvation is indeed the easy thing as we just accept what was done already at the Cross.

Someone say that Peter, John, Andrews, Nathanael were saved simply following Jesus.
How many of us left the job and any occupation in order to follow Jesus?
Then they may say that Peter and John had nasty job with fishes, what about Matthew and Zaccaeus.
Someone said Zachaeus was saved in a day shortly after he met Jesus. How many of us could say that "Half of my goods I give to the poor, and if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation I restore him 4 times". (Luke 19:8)

Salvation means the personal relation based on what was done by Jesus, which comes free by grace without any effort by us. But when we have got the salvation, there follows huge change of life.
We should not say that such change is the pre-requisit for the salvation, but instead such change of life follows after the salvation.

For the salvation, Romans say " How shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?" (Rom 10:14)


Rom 10:10 For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

Rom 10:17 So then faith [cometh] by hearing, and hearing by the word of God .

Listening to the Gospel, Reading Bible will help you quite a lot and will shorten the period of growing in the faith as we read:
And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

2 Timothy 3:15
15 And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures , which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

2Ti 3:16 All scripture [is] given by inspiration of God, and [is] profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:


2Ti 3:17 That the man of God may be perfect , throughly furnished unto all good works

 

J Jump, if belief is all that is necessary, then the demons too are saved (James 2:19)

 

Actually, here is what James 2:19 says:

"You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder."

That's pretty generic; what Jump is referring to is a belief in the risen Christ as Lord and Savior. That's quite a different thing than believing in "one God."

 

Granted - I guess; I think what I was getting at was that Jump seems to be putting forward some kind of 'easy believism' - and that doesn't wash with me.

 

Matt no where in the Bible does it say that salvation by grace through faith is hard. Where one must count the cost is in discipleship/Lordship.

Salvation by grace through faith is easy. It is so easy to understand and do even a child can place their faith in the sacrifical death of Jesus.

That's all the Bible requires.

And salvation is not a possibility for Satan and the fallen angels, so what they believe or don't believe is irrelevant. Salvation by grace through faith has been made available to mankind, so it it vitally important what man believes or doesn't believe.

 

The Sermon on the Mount was aimed at those who are already saved. He deals with that which he loves and he deals with that which he hates. He deals with the righteousness which is of faith and He deals with the lawlessness of many.

The Sermon on the Mount is not about spiritual salvation, but about things concerning the coming Kingdom; it's about the salvation of the soul.