The main purpose of this web site is to help shine the light on the fact that Salvation only comes through Jesus Christ. Many people in America (and the world) find this statement somewhat insulting. The popular belief these days is more of a New Age or Unitarian belief that God exists, but is different to different people, and likewise, salvation is different to different people.
While this belief sounds nice and friendly, and is definitely a pleasing thing to hear, it is an extremely dangerous belief to hold on to. I even know many people who claim to be Christians, but at the same time hold on to this “God is whoever you want Him to be” belief. These people just happen to believe for themselves that Jesus is the Son of God, but others can worship god through any other religeon, which is just as good and equal in God’s eyes.
However, if you read the Bible and simply listen to the actual words of Jesus, it is clear that Jesus certainty did not hold on to this view of Salvation. According to Jesus, there is only one way, one truth, and one life, that leads to salvation. One of the hundreds of statements to this truth is given by Jesus in John 14:5-7:
Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well.
Here are a few supporting scriptures that give the same message: John 10:9; Romans 5:2; Ephesians 2:18; Hebrews 10:20. The Bible is God’s revelation to mankind. It’s message is without error and proves itself to be true through many hundreds of fulfilled prophecy. The Bible also states hundreds of times that Salvation only comes through Jesus.
What is a Christian?
In today’s American culture and thought, the word Christian has taken on a couple of general meanings. One is more of a certain lifestyle such as going to church, and following a generally accepted “Christian” moral code. However, as I stated earlier, some people who say they’re “Christian” don’t really believe everything that Christ said about himself. The other meaning, true to its origin, simply means to be a follower of Christ. To clarify this, and make it distinct from the “cultural Christian” some people describe themselves with words like “Born again Christian”, or “Bible believing Christian”, or simply “Follower of Christ”.
Why do we need Jesus?
God is so incredibly perfectly, fearfully holy, totally pure, and completely just, that He cannot be in fellowship with sin. Sin literally means “to miss the mark”. Sin is anything that goes against the standard that God set for righteousness. This is a serious problem for mankind since every human has inherited the sinful nature from Adam and Eve, which they received when choosing to go against the standard that God had set for them.
Mankind is bent towards evil (sinful) behavior from birth. One of the most simple ways to prove this is to just look at a child. Parents will set up rules for the child, for its own protection. But every child, even before he knows how to speak will test his parents and see what he can get away with. If one child takes something he wants that another child has, there is often stealing and hitting involved. Where did the child learn this behavior?
Most children don’t see their parents grab things from one another and become violent with one another as a result. Something in the child nature says, “I don’t like what that person did, so I’m going to inflict violence on them until I get what I want.” We have to be taught to be good, but are naturally bad. Then as we grow up, we can reason for ourselves and know the difference between right and wrong. And even knowing this, we choose many times to do wrong over good. Every time a person lies, steals, cheats, has hatred in his heart towards another person, etc., that person is knowingly choosing evil behavior over good.
While when we were children, we were bad because it was in our nature, it becomes even worse as we grow older, because now we’re not acting only out of ignorance, but choosing bad over good with our reasoning. This makes us full of sin and unworthy to be in the presence of God.
How does Jesus save us?
The Bible says that even before God created man, He knew that man would sin, and had a plan for man’s redemption through His Son. While God is just, and cannot ignore sin, he is also loving and has made a way to cleans us from our sins through His Son. The punishment for sin is eternal death. Jesus, even though He was without sin, chose to die for the sins of mankind. Jesus took this punishment in our place. Then Jesus, being the perfect God he is, defeated death by rising from the dead.
Once you accept Jesus as Lord over your life, his punishment is applied to your sin, thereby freeing your from the cost of sin, which is death and eternal separation from God (aka hell).
How to receive salvation
The 10th chapter of Romans is good at explaining all the technical reasons of how believing in Jesus will save you, and verses 9 and 10 state it very simply:
That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.
God in His love for us made it very simple. We do not have to do lots of good works to outweigh the bad. We cannot earn our way to heaven through our own merit. It is simply faith in Jesus Christ and putting Him Lord over your life. When you do this, Jesus’ death becomes the punishment for the sin that you would otherwise have to pay. ALL of your sin, past, present, and future, is taken care of by Jesus. Believing in Jesus makes you worthy of standing before God in Heaven because God will now see His Son’s righteousness in you.
What’s next?
If you accept Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life, what do you do now? You grow in your faith by joining with other Christians in learning God’s Word, making a habit of personal prayer and reading the Bible, using the power of the Holy Spirit that now resides in you to transform your life from old sinful habits to obedience to the new Lord of your life.
Find a good church that teaches the Bible and believes it to be the perfect, inerrant word of God. It’s important to realize that most people who accept Jesus as their salvation, do not completely change overnight. It is a lifelong process, but you can be confident that when you mess up or continue in some of your old sinful habits, that you are forgiven. Remember that Jesus died for ALL of your sins, past, present, and future.
While your inner being has been saved and redeemed, it lives in a body that is still cursed by sin. Through the rest of our lives there will be a struggle between these two conflicting forces that reside together in you. The apostle Paul explains this in Romans chapter 7. Verses 14 – 25 sum it up like this:
We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.