GLORY TO THE KING MINISTRIES INTERNATIONAL Inc

HOW TO BE SAVED

The first question you may be asking is, “Why do I need to be saved?” To answer that, we need to go back to man’s beginnings.

When God created mankind, He made us “in His own image” (Genesis 1:27) – in other words, He designed us to be as much like God as it is possible for a finite creature to be like an infinite creator.

Because He wanted people who would willingly follow Him, rather than robots who had no choice, He gave them a test: a simple command. If they obeyed it, they would continue to have His life flowing through them; if they disobeyed, they would be cut off from that life.

Enter the devil, in the form of a serpent. He told the first couple on earth that, if they did what God had forbidden, they would become “as gods.” This didn’t mean that they would be “like God” – they were already in God’s image and likeness – but that they would be gods in their own right, setting their own rules and planning their own destinies.

Foolishly, they listened to the devil, disobeyed God, and were cut off from God’s life. That mistake meant that every person born since then has been born with a tendency toward sin.

Many people, when they hear the word “sin”, think of big things like murder or adultery. However, God’s definition of sin is coming short of His glory (Romans 3:23) – in other words, failing to live up to the original standard of being in God’s image and likeness.

This is where Christianity is different from all of the world’s religions that have ever been. Most world religions have the concept of God with a pair of scales, weighing our good against our bad. If we have more good than bad, we will get into Heaven; but if our bad outweighs our good, then its off to Hell.

God’s scales are really very different to this. He does not weigh our good against our bad; nor does He weigh us against any other person. Rather, He weighs all of us – our whole life – against His glory: how well have we shown forth His image and likeness.

To look at it another way, every sin is an act of high treason against God – we are telling Him that we do not accept His rule over us, but rather want to set ourselves up as our own gods, ruling over our own kingdoms.

Now, how many times a day do you think you might miss the mark of being like God? Let’s be very generous and say you only sin three times a day. Over the course of a year, that is over 1000 sins. Now let’s take it over a lifetime of, say, 70 years – that’s over 70,000 sins. Over 70,000 counts of high treason against God! No wonder that God says that “the wages of sin is death.” (Romans 6:23)

This doesn’t just mean physical death, but eternal spiritual death – being cut off from the presence and life of God in Hell.

Some people mistakenly think that Christianity teaches that God will punish people for Adam’s sin. That is not true. Adam’s sin merely set us up for sin, in much the way as an inherited predisposition for a certain physical disease will set us up to get that disease. God will judge each person for his or her own sin – and as we just saw above, each of us has plenty for which to be judged. If that were all there was to the story, every one of us would be heading for an eternity in Hell.

That was not God’s desire at all. He loves people, and wants us to spend eternity with Him in Heaven. However, because God is totally just as well as totally loving, He could not set aside His judgment that sin deserves the death penalty. The only solution was for someone else to pay that penalty on behalf of sinful man.

Now the problem was that, humanly speaking, one life can only be worth one life. Even if God had been able to find one person who was absolutely perfect, with not one single sin for which he personally deserved the death penalty, that person would only have been able to pay the death penalty for one other person. In order to pay the death penalty for every person who ever lived, the substitute had to be someone much greater than man. Only God Himself was big enough.

However, God could not die. Also, to represent man, the substitute had to be human. So God the Son, the second Person of the Trinity, took on a human body in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. He lived a sinless life, and allowed the Jewish and Roman authorities to sentence Him to death, even though He had Himself done nothing deserving of death. In doing so He stood representing all mankind, and received the death penalty on behalf of all people not from the human authorities, but from God the Father. His death paid the price of all human sin, and His resurrection showed that His death had been accepted on our behalf.

Does this mean that everyone on earth will be saved? No, for we must also play our part. God extends salvation to us not on the basis of what we have done (works), but on the basis of His provision for us in Christ (grace.) However, we have to accept it, and respond to His grace.

So how do we do this?

Firstly, Believe. We need to believe that there is only one God, the God of the Bible, who manifested Himself in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. We cannot just add Him to a list of other gods: we must accept Him as the one and only God, and the one and only Lord of our lives.

We must also believe that Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation, and that He died not just for the whole of mankind as a group, but for us personally and individually.

Secondly, Repent. This means to be truly sorry that we have sinned against God, and that we have worshipped other gods (including the great god “self”.) It means being willing to turn away from sin and allow God to enable us to live the way He wants us to. If we have sinned against other people, where it is possible to do so it will also mean making restitution (for instance, if we have stolen from other people or cheated them.)

Thirdly, Trust. I can look at a chair and believe that it will hold my weight, but until I sit on it I will never experience its support. Likewise, we can believe that Jesus Christ died for all mankind, or even believe that He died for us personally, but until we trust Him for our salvation we will not experience that salvation. If we are trusting in our own works, then we are not trusting Christ. If we believe that we are good enough to get to Heaven without Him, then we are not trusting Him. We need to know that, if someone were to ask why we believe we are going to Heaven, we would be able to say with all our heart, “Because Jesus Christ died for me.”

Fourthly, Live. God’s grace is not just a “blind eye” turned to our sin. It is His power given to us, even though we don’t deserve it, to enable us to live the way He wants us to – something we could not do without Him. We can’t take hold of His grace for salvation, but refuse to take hold of it for life.

When we believe in Christ, repent of our sins and trust Him for our salvation, a great miracle happens inside of us. The Bible calls it being “born again.” We are reconnected to God’s life, we become His child, and His Holy Spirit comes to live within us. It is God’s Spirit who enables us to live the life that God wants.

Basically, we have two choices: we can face God’s judgment on our own, on the basis of the things we have done and the way we have lived, with more than 70,000 counts of high treason against us. That choice can only lead to one thing: the penalty of eternal, spiritual death.

Or, we can face God’s judgment “in Christ”, knowing that He has already paid the death penalty on our behalf, and that God is not looking at our sins but at Christ’s righteousness. That choice leads to eternal life in Heaven with God.

Which choice will you make?

If you have chosen life in Christ, we would love to hear for you so that we can pray for you. Please contact us and tell us of your decision.