Biblical Salvation 3

3. Signing up for salvation

Christians today often talk about when they got "saved." What they mean is when they "signed up" for salvation.

Romans 10:9 gives us a simple overview of how we can reserve our salvation on the Day of Judgment:

"If you confess with your mouth 'Jesus is Lord,' and have faith in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."

The apostle Paul argued both with his fellow Jews and even some other Christians about how a person might be considered right with God. Some of his Jewish brothers thought that they had inherited acceptance with God because of God's relationship with Israel in the Old Testament. Paul disagreed:

"All [that is, both Jew and Gentile] have sinned and are lacking the glory of God [intended for humanity]."

Paul had been very diligent at keeping the Jewish law (cf. Phil. 3:6), so when he found out even he was not right with God, he concluded that no one could be right with God apart from Christ:

"We reckon that a person is considered right with God on the basis of faith apart from keeping the Jewish law" (Rom. 3:28).

This faith is a trust in what God has done for us through Jesus Christ. God considers those right with God "who have faith in the one who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over because of our transgressions and was raised because of our justification" (Rom. 4:24-26).

Justification is a legal term that has to do with us being considered acceptable to God. If we think of a court scene, it is being acquitted of sin and being found "not guilty." God "justifies" us, declares us right with Him, if we trust in what he has done through the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ. Further, we accept Jesus as the Lord of all, as we saw above in Romans 10:9.

Our faith in God and Christ thus brings about our justification:

"Therefore, since we have been justified on the basis of faith we have peace with God" (Rom. 5:1).

Acts 2:38 also speaks of repentance and baptism as a part of being reconciled to God:

"Repent and let each of you be baptized on the basis of the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."

In this response of Peter to the Jewish crowds in Jerusalem, Acts gives us some other important pieces to the puzzle of signing up for salvation. We must turn toward God and away from those aspects of our lives that have been contrary to Him. Water baptism represents the cleansing of our sins and God's forgiveness.

But the most essential component of all in coming to Christ is God's part. After God justifies us on the basis of our faith in Him, His Holy Spirit enters our life and makes us officially His: "you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."

Paul says on this topic that "if someone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not of Him" (Rom. 8:9). God is "the one who has sealed us [in ownership] and has given us the guaranteeing down payment of the Holy Spirit in our hearts" (2 Cor. 1:22). The Holy Spirit inside a Christian thus is the tell-tale sign of God's ownership of us. Spirit is the stuff of heaven, and the Holy Spirit inside us is a foretaste of glory divine.

Acts tells us that receiving the Holy Spirit involves a cleansing of the heart on the basis of faith (Acts 15:9). 2 Thessalonians 2:13 speaks of God choosing the Thessalonian church "for salvation by the sanctification of the Spirit and by trust in the truth." Sanctification means that something becomes holy--it comes to belong to God. You don't treat lightly something that belongs to a god.

The term holiness has as much of a feel to it as a definition. It is the godness or holiness of God that led the prophet Isaiah to fall on his face in Isaiah 6. It was the godness or holiness of God that led Israel to put to death any animal that happened to touch the mountain where God was speaking to Moses in Exodus 19. When 1 Peter 1:16 says "Be holy, because I am holy," it means to live in a manner that is worthy of the One to whom you belong.

If we think of sin as something that makes us dirty, the sanctification we experience when we become a Christian is like a cleansing, as we saw in Acts 15:9 above. Hebrews 9:14 tells us of the cleansing of our spirits that takes place as the sacrifice of Christ sanctifies and cleanses us of our past sins.

We can tie all these images together:

1. We "sign up" for salvation by placing our faith in what God has done for us in Christ, including Christ's sacrificial death and his victorious resurrection. By acknowledging Christ's resurrection we acknowledge him as Lord. In response, God justifies us and considers us right with Him, acquitted of our sins.

2. We must repent or turn from our sins if this faith in God is to be authentic.

3. We will be baptized in water as a demonstration of the cleansing God does inside us.

4. God will cleanse our "inside" by sending His Holy Spirit in our hearts. This sanctifies us or makes us God's possession.

As we will see, it also empowers us!