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What Is Salvation And Why Do I Need It? God has reached out to us as men and women by communicating to us through the Bible and His Son, Jesus Christ how we can have LIFE. He wants us to have relationship with Him (called Salvation) and the kind of LIFE He created us for. In the Bible He explains bad news (about us) and good news (about Himself). I. Bad News We are all sinners (Romans 3:23 says 'for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God'). No matter who we are, we have all come short of God's standard of perfection in our thoughts, words and actions. This may not seem bad until we realize the worst part: The penalty for sin is death! Romans 6:23 states that sin actually pays a wage which is death. ('For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord') This does not simply refer to physical death, but to eternal death--separation from God forever. Since we have all sinned; there is nothing we can do about it. We have all already earned death as our reward. No amount of good living, helping others, going to church or any other thing we can do can change our destiny. Since we are hopeless and helpless, God decided to pay the penalty Himself and that is the Good News: II. Good News God the Son became a man, Jesus Christ, in order to take our place and die for us! Romans 5:8 tells us that "God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." God has informed us in the Bible that Jesus Christ paid the penalty we deserved to pay. He died when He did not deserve it but we did. When He rose from the grave alive, three days later, He proved that He had defeated sin and death, providing a way for us to have Life and relationship with God. This is the best part of the Good News! Each of us can be saved from eternal death as a free gift of God through faith in Jesus Christ. Ephesians 2:8-9 ('For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast') explains that there is nothing we can do to deserve life with God. We must simply trust what He has done. That is what "faith" or "believing" is. It is dependence on Jesus Christ rather than our own efforts. It is believing what He says about us and what He has done for us and therefore trusting Him Everyone must decide who they are going to trust. Will you trust yourself and pay for your own sins, eternally, or will you trust Jesus Christ as your own personal substitute who paid the penalty for you? Acts 4:12 says; 'And 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.' You can tell God what you are thinking and what you are trusting in, but it is not the prayer that saves you. God saves you when you trust Jesus Christ. Romans 10:9-10 says; 'that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved; for with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.' At Arriola Bible we preach Jesus Christ and Him Crucified. THE ONLY WAY TO HEAVEN; 'Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me".' (John 14:6). 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 says; 'Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures'. |