This week I am going to talk about salvation. I commented to a legalistic friend that once people have a revelation of God and accept Jesus they are saved. She corrected me. You have to acknowledge your sin and repent. If you do not say the Sinner’s Prayer you are not saved!
I tried to picture a person with limited knowledge of God, coming before Him and dutifully following the doctrine of salvation. I thought back to when I came to know God as a teenager. I remember being in the presence of a great light, triune God, and being so aware of His supreme majesty and knowing how lowly and sinful I was. I never prayed the sinner’s prayer. I felt like Isaiah in Isaiah 6:5 when he stood in the presence of triune God and realised how unclean he was.
So I looked to the conversion of Saul/Paul in Acts 9:1-19. At no point in that retelling of the story does Saul/Paul say anything other than “Who are you, Lord?” When he recounts the story in his letters he does not speak of that either. He was amazingly moved by the experience. The verses that follow this passage tell of how he immediately went into the synagogues to preach that Jesus was the Son of God.
What does the Bible say about salvation?
Acts 4:12“Salvation is found in no one else (Jesus v10), for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”
Acts 13:32-41“therefore, my brothers, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. Through him everyone who believes is justified from everything you could not be justified from by the law of Moses.” Justification involves the forgiveness of sins and the gift of righteousness.
Romans 3:21-26:righteousness is from God and comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. We all fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely by God’s grace through the redemption that came through Jesus. Jesus became the atoning sacrifice and when we have faith in that blood shed on the cross we are justified freely. What do you believe? Do you believe that Jesus is your saviour, the Son of God and that He died to pay for your sins? This is salvation by faith, not legalistic sinner prayers.
Romans 1:16-20“for in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith’.”
2 Corinthians 7:8-10:Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. Godly sorrow leads us to see ourselves through God’s eyes and see our sin for what it is. This leads us to repent of our sin. What do you do when you are sorry (repent)? You ask forgiveness. When you experience Godly sorrow and ask His forgiveness you receive that divine grace through Jesus your Saviour. Godly sorrow is centred on God, on His perfection and majesty. It recognises the wickedness of sin. Worldly sorrow is centred on the individual (self-centred). It centres on the pain caused to the individual by the wrong they have caused. It does not lead to repentance and access to divine grace.
The point of this is that it is very easy to get caught up in doctrine and myriad ideas about how we must be saved. We certainly need to accept at some stage that we have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We need to acknowledge that the payment for those sins has been made by Jesus, the son of God. We need to acknowledge that Jesus is the only way to salvation (John 14:6). But we do not necessarily do that at the point of salvation.
I leave you with Jesus’s words in Luke 11:46,52. “And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and your yourselves will not lift one finger to help them...Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering”

I am taking a break from the study of John for the next two blog entries to talk about safety nets and being saved. Over the past week, I have had conversations with two church doctrine loving Christian friends. I am talking about one today and in the next blog, I will discuss the other.
The first friend approached me with her concerns about us not attending church at the moment. She worked on the assumption that I had dictated to my husband and children (three of whom are adults) to leave the church against their will. I love her dearly but, as I read her letter, I thought of Matthew 16:23 when Peter rebuked Jesus after he told the disciples he would have to die. Jesus, knowing this rebuke came from satan and was designed to tempt Him to not die, replied “Get behind me, satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.” I am following God and His directions to me. The rest of my family also sought God’s guidance before we mutually came to the decision to walk away from our last church and take a sabbatical from church membership. Since that time, my faith in God has grown deeper. My husband and I were discussing this today. We concluded that our experience is that people go to church and feel this implies some magical power of salvation over them. They also believe that if you do not go to church that means you do not believe in God. The magical belief works in the same way that many non-Christians will have their children baptised because they believe it somehow protects them. Our other conclusion was that church membership often keeps us so busy with activities that we do not have time to truly worship Jesus and God.
If you believe church is where God wants you to be, great! Every person must make their own choice. However, I have noticed during my life that many people seem to relax when they join a church and tend to coast along, believing that attending church will be enough. Of course it is not. Matthew 6:33-34 is Jesus’ words to his followers. You must first seek God’s kingdom and His righteousness. That is your primary act of worship. This is how Jesus sees our relationship. Later in Matthew 7:7-8, He instructs us to ask, and it will be given, seek, and you will find and knock and the door will be opened to you. In other words, Jesus is number one, not attending church on Sunday, not the church hierarchy, not the doctrine, just Jesus. If you put Jesus first that is OK. Not all Christians in churches put the church ahead of Jesus, but many give their greatest energy and worship to church membership. God loves those who work for Him, but He does not look proudly on those who replace worship of Him with church attendance and activities. The problem with churches is not those of active faith, it is those who do not give their top priority to their relationship with God. This is where many churches get caught up, as did the Pharisees in Jesus time, with legalism and secular concerns.

John 3:1-8
One of the people who heard Jesus’ speaking, and believed, was a Pharisee and member of the Sanhedrin named Nicodemus. He came to see Jesus at night. It is difficult to know whether he came at night to hide his support for Jesus, or whether he came because then he could talk to Jesus without interruption. The Pharisees were the ones who had written the myriad rules and regulations the ordinary Jew was expected to keep. They were the legalistic ones Jesus most opposed. To have a man from the legalistic group seek Jesus was amazing and also risky for Nicodemus.
When Nicodemus came to Jesus, he called him Rabbi. Rabbi means teacher and is reserved for those with authority to teach God’s word. By saying this Nicodemus acknowledged Jesus’ authority. Nicodemus continued by stating that he knew Jesus was a teacher from God because only one who God was with could perform the miraculous signs Jesus had performed.
Jesus’ response to Nicodemus was to declare that no one can see the Kingdom of God, unless they are born again. That’s a tricky one. How can that be? Nicodemus could not understand how an old man could re-enter his mother’s womb and be born again. Jesus response was that no one can enter the Kingdom of God unless they are born of water (purified and baptised) and the Spirit.
What does being born of the Spirit mean? We must live a new life, live differently. We must have a new nature. We need to change our attitude to life, our philosophy. We cannot do these things without the power of the Holy Spirit in us. This is an introduction to the concept of being born again. Jesus continued to teach his disciples the meaning of these words throughout His ministry so there will be more discussion about this in later blogs.

John 2:23-25
Jesus stayed in Jerusalem for the Passover. Interestingly, He did perform miraculous signs. Not for the temple leaders, but the people who came seeking Him. At Passover, Jerusalem was full of Jews coming to worship at the temple. The teachers of the law would teach in the temple. It was natural for Jesus to teach also. As he taught and moved around Jerusalem, he performed many miraculous signs. The people following saw the miraculous signs, so they believed in Him. Jesus, however, did not trust them. He could see into their hearts. There were those there who had been sent by the temple leaders and only pretended to follow Him. Others would believe to a point where it became more of an advantage to not believe in Him. Others were weak and too afraid to remain loyal to Jesus word when threatened. There were probably some who became permanent followers who did believe. Those ones would have followed Jesus after He left Jerusalem.
Jesus also did not need the testimony of people, to prove his authority. Jesus came in God’s authority. He trusted God to prove who He was, not the testimony of weak or evil men.
So when God asks us to do something, isn't His authority enough?