What Must I Do to Be Saved?

[Tim Felten]

What must I do to be saved?
What: Put your faith in Jesus Christ alone. There is only one requirement of God upon those seeking His forgiveness and eternal life: faith. "Faith?" you might ask, "Faith in what?" However, it is not a question of what we have faith in, for instance, having faith in our own personal faith, or being baptized, or where we go to church nor faith in anything else we do that can saves us. Rather, it is a question of Who? It is Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who is the object of our faith. He and He alone saves. Acts 4:12, proclaims of Him: "There is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved." John 3:16 also states, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him, shall not perish, but have eternal life.”

Why?
1) You are a sinner. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). All (that means you, me and everyone else [except Jesus Christ]) have missed the mark ("fallen short") of God's perfection; or, to state it as the Bible puts it: we are sinners, and even worse, we are unable, in and of ourselves to be anything, but sinners.
2) All sin must be punished. "So what?" one might say, "God is a loving a merciful God, right? So, He'll forgive me." And that is right; God is a God of love, and He will forgive you, under His requirements, though, not yours, mine or anyone else's. Although God is a loving and merciful God, He is also a just God, Who will not stand for injustice. Just as Romans 6:23 states emphatically “For the wages of sin is death”. Death−that doesn’t just mean physical death, either, that means spiritual death as well, i.e., separation from God. For how long? Forever. For what sin? Any.
3) Jesus paid the price for all your sin, past, present and future.

Romans 5:8 “But God commends [shows] His own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

Quoting Romans 6:23, this time more fully: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.”

But was the one payment paid by Christ enough to pay for mine, yours and everyone else’s sin? YES! How do we know? Because God raised Him from the dead.
“That if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; For with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.” Romans 10:9

Conclusion: So, why does God forgive us of our sins when we believe (have faith) in Jesus Christ? 1) Because Jesus died in our place (for each and every person of the entire human race−that means you!). 2) Because God accepted Jesus’ sacrifice for us, and proved it by raising Him from the dead. 3) Because when we put our faith in Jesus, we are in essence, reaching out and receiving this wonderful gift of God.

[John Roberts]

I don't think belief and faith are the same thing. One can believe and yet not put their faith in that which they believe. I could say that I believe Christ to be the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world and yet not put my faith in that belief (I don't care anyones philosophical [no choice] argument, only what the Bible says). If you believe it, put your faith in it, by obeying it.

As a Lamb of God Jesus sacrificed himself so that by his death he destroyed that which had the power of death, the devil. The devil has been destroyed by Jesus' sacrifice of himself. Jesus has destroyed sin, (he taketh away the sin of the world) which is that which had the power of death as we read that it was by the sin of one man, Adam: "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:" (Rom 5:12)

Jesus has destroyed sin by being the Lamb of God, but sin still reigns in the world, it is destroyed but yet it still lives and because it still lives people will still die, but if we believe in what Christ has done and then put our faith in that by obedience then we will be saved.

[Tim Felten]

I agree to a certain extent to what you're saying. Faith is not simply a mental accent (James 2:19), but a real productive faith (James 2:17). However, it is impossible to work our way to Heaven or to state it another way, to please God by our works and not only in regards to salvation, but in any sense whatsoever (Romans 3:9-20; Galatians 3:21; Ephesians 2:8-9; Titus 3:5), until, that is, we place our faith (trust, believe) in Jesus Christ alone on the sole basis of His death in our behalf and His bodily resurrection (John 3:16; 1 Corinthians 15:1-4) can our works be good, truly. Until that specific point, their is no possiblity for us to do good works, in terms of what God Himself deems as good works nor any possiblity of salvation whatsoever. Good works will result from one who has been saved by grace through faith in Christ alone, but they in no sense whatsoever save, but merely prove us to be saved (James 2:14-26).

You may be saying that and I may not be understanding you correctly, but just in case. ;)