Sunday 19 July 2015

Salvation, Eternity, and the Christian

Salvation, Eternity and the Christian
“That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.  
For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.  
As the Scripture says, “Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame.”  
For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him,  for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
                                                                                                                                 Romans 10:9-13
Here in his letter to the Romans the apostle Paul makes it clear how we are saved. How we get to heaven. He states,
“...if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
This is the message Christians need to be taking to the world today.
Salvation is first of all an act of faith. It is believing Jesus is Lord, the Son of God, God incarnate. That Jesus is the Saviour of man and that God raised Him from the dead. That is what gets us to heaven.
Each person in their hearts must believe in their heart the words of Jesus who said,
“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” 
                                                                                                                                              John 14:6.
Each person must answer the question Jesus asked Martha,
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” 
                                                                                                                                  John 11:25,26
  It doesn’t matter who we are Jew or Gentile we have the same Lord, the same God. God loves all mankind equally.
All we have to do is call on the name of the Lord to be saved. God couldn’t have made things any easier.
Since the dawn of time mankind has know there is life after death. As a result he has devised various way he thought you got to God. Mankind tried to reach up to God. Reaching up to God cannot be done.  
  God realized this and instead God chose to reach down to mankind in the form of Jesus Christ.
He made getting into heaven is as simple as believing on Him.
The book of acts records the apostle Paul as telling the Greeks the way to heaven. It is the same today. The book of Acts records,
“Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious.  
For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you. 
“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands.  
And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.  
From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.  
God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.  
‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ 
“Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by man’s design and skill.  
In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.  
For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.” 
When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.”  
At that, Paul left the Council.  
A few men became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others"
                                                                                           Acts 17:17-34
This is the message we as Christians need to be presenting to the world.
We need to be asking people to answer Christ’s question to Martha when He said,
“I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” 
                                                                                                    John 11:25,26
Please think about it.

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