"What Must I Do to be Saved?"

In our ongoing pursuit of a pastoral ministry, I often receive questionnaires from interested churches wanting to know of my stand/conviction et al on certain matters. Some of these are very ordinary type things, but one recently asked the following two questions:

1. How do you tell someone how they may be saved? And,
2. Please tell us your understanding of grace.

Since I feel that the two are inextricably linked, I sent back an answer to the church which in fact incorporated my stand on both matters. The following is what I e-mailed to the search committee.

“You will note, and I trust that this is acceptable to you as a search committee, that I have incorporated your second and third questions into one. I do this because grace is the integral factor in discussing the doctrine of soteriology. I am sure that you will glean a good understanding of my convictions with respect to divine grace.

First off, may I direct you back to the initial documents that I e-mailed to you with my profile and to the one in particular entitled: “Doctrinal Statement”. The tenth of these doctrines state the words, “Irresistible Grace”, beside which you will find this explanation:

“I believe that God the Son has sent the Holy Spirit to work alongside and through the preached Word. The Spirit of God regenerates elect sinners and draws them irresistibly to Christ granting them by His Sovereign Grace both faith and repentance which they then exercise in Christ as both Savior and Lord”.

I am glad you asked about this doctrine and the work of grace for it is certainly the key to understanding all that Christianity, the Christian faith and what it means to be a Christian is all about.

If you will bear with me briefly, we must go back to the very beginning and understand why there is a need for grace in the life of men. At that time when the world was still very new, men and women amounted to only two individuals and God having given His first dictum, viz,

“And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."
Well, of course we are more than familiar with what transpired not long afterward when man took of this fruit against God’s explicit command. Funny thing is, he did not die physically; but from that point on he was and is spiritually dead.

The Apostle Paul, millennia later clearly affirmed this particular death of all – ALL – who are outside of Christ. To the Ephesian believers he wrote:

“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience-- among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. “

And again to the Colossian believers he wrote:

“And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, “

And all he was saying here was that in that spiritual deadness they were, before Christ, totally incapable of doing anything of a spiritual nature. There was no life there in the spirit with which to operate. That is, note the words above underlined, “no life” until “God made alive”.

Perhaps we can consider this in terms of that well known story of Lazarus in John 11. Lazarus’s sisters had sent word to the Lord when their brother took sick. The disciples were very keen to get on to see if they could be of some
help. Jesus as we know refrained from going straight away and so Lazarus died. When the Lord with the disciples finally arrived, Martha made a very telling statement, to wit, “Lord, if you had been here our brother would not have died”.

Well the intervening events are all well known, even the culmination of it all as Jesus stood outside the tomb where Lazarus had been buried, now dead for three days, and this is what happened:

“When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out." “

Now I realize that for a great many in the professing evangelical church of our present day this story has become almost “old hat”; so much so that the spiritual significance has been all but lost. To be sure all will look upon it as a tremendous miracle that our Lord performed, but very few today will see what it is that this act of God through Christ does symbolize. Can you imagine what all those standing around that tomb must have been thinking – “Why this man’s mad; does he really think that a man who has been dead for three days can not come back to life?”

I feel quite certain that if you or I were there our thoughts would have been similar. Yet, what happened next: Note:

“The man who had died came out…”

Well, we say of course because Jesus called him; and Jesus is God and thus He was able to give Lazarus life – indeed new life. That’s absolutely correct. It was the grace of God giving new life to a man who had been dead. And that is precisely what happens when God through the power of His Holy Spirit at the preaching of Christ does to those whom He has chosen from before the foundation of the world, for salvation. Note again:

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. “

Man died in Eden; and it is never until God reaches into that dead soul by grace, His grace, and grants new life does a man live again in Christ. And, that brethren, is how salvation takes place. In terms of “telling” one what he or she does to be saved, there are a number of passages to which we can look. For example, when the Philippian jailer came rushing in to Paul and Silas’s jail cell crying, “What must I do to be saved?” Paul replied very simply: “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved…”. And to the Roman church Paul wrote this:

“if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.”

This very simply put is how one is saved. But the question must be asked, “Where does this faith come from? How does one ‘believe’? I know as you do that there are tens of thousands out there populating churches of every conceivable stripe stating, often with great emphasis, that “Yes, I believe”. They have been told from countless pulpits that if they will just come down the aisle, and sign the card, and breathe the sinner’s prayer then they will be eternally secure. Now, don’t get me wrong that can and does happen. A great many that I have known over the years including my own wife were saved in precisely this way. I do not disparage it. But one must come to the realization that all these activities – or works – are not the way to salvation. Those who come truly before the cross of Jesus Christ and repent of sin, and place faith in Christ for salvation have already been regenerated. Otherwise they would never come. Man in his natural state hates God; he hates Christ; he has no use whatever for the Bible or God’s plan and life of salvation. He needs a new nature, and that alone can, by grace, be given by God alone through the ministry of His Holy Spirit.

Notice the words of the Lord Jesus Christ in John 6:

“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him . . . “

And again just a little later He re-affirms this truth having spoken to the crowds about the necessity of eating His flesh and drinking His blood and many turned back from following Him – note:

“And he said, "This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father."

It is no more possible for a spiritually dead man/woman to come to Christ on their own accord then it was for Lazarus to get up, all by himself, and walk out of that tomb. It took the very special and efficacious call of Jesus Christ to perform that miracle. Do you suppose if anyone else, even the disciples, had walked into that tomb and given Lazarus a little nudge and said, “Hey, Lazarus, get up … the family’s out here waiting for you!”, that Lazarus would have stirred. No. Never. It took the grace of God, working through His Son the Lord Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, to give life through His call. Dear friends, it can happen in no other way.

One more vital matter that is absolutely essential for us all to get a hold of and that is answering the age old question of balancing the sovereignty of God with the responsibility of man. Once again in John chapter six, Jesus told His hearers one explicitly important matter with respect regarding those who would come to Him for salvation, notice the beautiful balance that our Lord utilized:

“All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. “

Jesus has spoken of the election of a body of people whom, as He states above: “All that the Father gives me will come to me…”; that’s God’s sovereignty, and then human responsibility appears magnificently in that second clause: “…and whoever comes to me I will never cast out”. There we have the truly “coming ones” and the eternal security of the Saints all rolled in to one. Beautiful!!

Perhaps you have heard of Dr. John MacArthur. Undoubtedly since his church, Grace Community, is just a couple of hours or so away from you in Sun Valley. If you know anything of his ministry, you know that this is the gospel he brings before his people every week. Perhaps you would like to read an excellent sermon of his on just this:
http://www.ondoctrine.com/2mac0032.htm

Dearest saints of First Baptist Church, of ________we have been seeking the mind of Christ in service for Him for some time now. One of the biggest stumbling blocks that we have encountered in finding a church/pulpit in which to serve has been this very doctrine. Perhaps, I have no way of knowing for sure, I have as they say in the vernacular of our day just “shot myself in the foot” by answering your question on salvation and grace in just this manner. I do not know – God knows, and it is at His direction and not ours or yours that we walk. We look to Him alone. And we thank you for your patience.”