How We Are NOT Saved
Bob Yandian
There is much confusion today about salvation because it's so different than religion. We are not to be involved in religion but in a relationship with God through the Lord Jesus Christ. That is how God saves us. We actually become part of His family. It's not the fact that suddenly we find some common ground with God. No, we actually go through a miraculous time where we accept Jesus as our Savior and we become a child of God and we're made into God's image.
Man has a way of thinking religiously, and the religion appeals to the nature of our flesh. The flesh says, “I can be good enough to be saved. I can do what God wants. Maybe I don't know what God wants, but I'm going to offer him what I do have, and I'm sure everything's going to be all right.”
Cain and Abel
It was the same with Cain and Abel. Abel offered a better sacrifice. He came with an animal. Apparently, he learned that from his parents who God rescued after they had sinned. God made animal skins for them. He realized that there is something about the shedding of blood that is important.
Cain, on the other hand, did not. He came with the works of his own hands, vegetables, things he had grown and offered them to God. God did not accept them, but He gave Canin a chance to go and turn it around and come back and offer what God wanted.
Many people are like Cain. They have tried their own works, tried their own way. Thinking they're okay with God. Then we come along and tell them they're not. They will either act like Cain and get all inflamed and upset. Or they will ask, "Well, how do I get saved?" God gives people plenty of opportunity to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, but they must do it His way.
Why Did Jesus Have to Come?
If God could save you because you're a good person, or because you are kind to other people, then why did Jesus have to come and die? Because the Bible says there is none righteous, no, not one (Romans 3:10). That verse emphasizes it twice. There's no one that is righteous. That's why Jesus had to come.
Because we are NOT saved by the keeping of the law, which is rules and regulations. To get saved you need somebody standing between you and God. His name is Jesus, and by accepting Jesus as your Savior, Jesus unites us with God. He's the one that pulls us and makes us into one.
When we accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, the Bible calls Him our Mediator. There is one Mediator, not dozens, not hundreds, not Buddha, not anybody else. There's one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:5). He's the one who saved us. We believed in Him, then He united us to God.
That's the plan of salvation, that's the simplicity of what we should tell the world. Your works are not going to save you. Your works don't get you to heaven. That's why Jesus had to come. He wants to give you eternal life as a free gift. This is what makes the gospel so simple that the Bible says a fool couldn't err in it.
Faith to Receive
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. Ephesians 2:8-9 NKJV
Notice, it is faith that is “not of yourself.” So then, faith, is the gift of God. Not only is Jesus Christ a gift, but the means to receive him is a gift. That gift is faith. God gives us the faith so salvation is entirely of God. Every aspect of it is from God and none of it is by us. We do not accomplish it. We get in on it, but we get it by our decision to accept Jesus Christ. God simply says whosoever will; may come.
Why Are We Still Here?
It really brings down witnessing to something simple. God has left us here on this earth to win souls to Jesus Christ. He didn't leave us here just to be a blessing for ourselves, but to win the lost to Jesus. Immediately when we get born again, the Great Commission is handed to us. When we received Jesus, God said, "Wasn't that simple? I want you to take this to the rest of the world." And that's the responsibility that's been laid on the church is to spread the gospel.
Living by Faith
How did we get saved? By grace. How did that grace come to us? By our faith. How did that faith come to us? It was a gift of God, and the gift of God came to us by the hearing of the gospel. Even the faith to get saved or to meet any need we have is given by God.
God has stooped to our level to save us because he loves us, not because we're lovable. So many people think, “well, God must have found something good in me.” He couldn’t find anything good in you. The only good He found in you was the day you said, “I want to receive Jesus as my Savior.” That can happen to anybody who hears the gospel. He's not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
We are saved by faith. Then past that point, we live by faith, resting in God's eternal spiritual and natural provisions. I encourage you to get a copy of my book “Theology Simplified” to learn more about grace, faith, and our redemption.
