What Must I Believe to Be Saved?

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00:00:05.000 | It's one of the most important questions that can ever be asked.

00:00:09.000 | What must I believe to be saved?

00:00:11.000 | It was asked of Pastor John a few years back in a Q&A setting.

00:00:15.000 | Here's how Pastor John answered the question.

00:00:17.000 | Well, Paul says, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved."

00:00:22.000 | He says, "If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord,

00:00:26.000 | and in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved."

00:00:33.000 | So I take text like that, and I would say, "You begin at this core of the death of Jesus.

00:00:44.000 | He died for our sins, which means I must believe I'm a sinner."

00:00:50.000 | A person that doesn't believe he's a sinner can't be saved.

00:00:54.000 | If there's nothing to forgive, He didn't do anything for me.

00:00:57.000 | If He didn't do anything for me, I'm not believing Him for salvation.

00:01:00.000 | If I'm not believing Him for salvation, I'm not saved.

00:01:02.000 | So you must believe that you are a sinner.

00:01:04.000 | You must believe that there's a God who has created the possibility for sin.

00:01:11.000 | That is, sin only has meaning as the falling short of the expectations of your Creator.

00:01:17.000 | So there has to be a Creator God out there who has expectations of humans

00:01:22.000 | that they trust Him, love Him, live for Him, and we fail, and therefore we're under His--

00:01:29.000 | that'd be the third thing now--we're under His holy--call it different things--judgment, wrath.

00:01:35.000 | You've got to believe that.

00:01:37.000 | If you're a sinner, and there's a holy God, and you're defining sin as a falling short of that God,

00:01:43.000 | then in order to understand what He's doing to solve that,

00:01:46.000 | you've got to understand that He's angry about that.

00:01:50.000 | He's just. He's a good judge.

00:01:52.000 | So what has He now done to solve the problem of our alienation from Him?

00:01:58.000 | He has sent His Son into the world.

00:02:03.000 | You've got to believe in the deity of Jesus.

00:02:07.000 | It says in Psalm 49 that no man can pay a ransom for another man.

00:02:13.000 | And then a few verses later, I think it's verse 15, it says God will pay the ransom.

00:02:19.000 | So He couldn't have used John or Peter or Paul to die for us.

00:02:25.000 | He had to have the God-man die for us.

00:02:28.000 | So the deity of Jesus is essential.

00:02:32.000 | And then what did He do? What did He do?

00:02:33.000 | Well, He lived a perfect life.

00:02:34.000 | You can't believe that Jesus sinned and be saved, I don't think,

00:02:38.000 | because then the sacrifice made for you was not what was required,

00:02:42.000 | and you're not believing in what God did for you.

00:02:45.000 | So He's a sinless Son of God, and now He gives Himself up to die in my place.

00:02:54.000 | So the substitutional dimension of the death of Christ for my sins,

00:03:00.000 | and there's lots of ways to talk about that in the Bible,

00:03:03.000 | and I think you can be very confused about some of those and be saved.

00:03:08.000 | I don't want to start listing off all the ways the Bible talks about that

00:03:12.000 | and how confused a person can be about them and still be saved.

00:03:15.000 | Let's just say at the core of the gospel of how this is all remedied is

00:03:21.000 | Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who never sinned, got in my place

00:03:26.000 | and took the wrath of God for me and died in my place.

00:03:32.000 | If He had stayed dead, we would still be in our sins,

00:03:36.000 | so we must believe He rose from the dead.

00:03:38.000 | So now He's risen from the dead, and I would say that's the cluster.

00:03:43.000 | I'm willing to kind of stop there.

00:03:46.000 | You might be able to bring to my mind some things that would be

00:03:48.000 | so theologically closely attached to those that I would say,

00:03:51.000 | "Okay, yeah, that's got to be included as well."

00:03:53.000 | But if somebody asked me, "What do I have to believe?"

00:03:56.000 | I'd say, "There's the cluster of things that you've got to know about yourself,

00:04:00.000 | know about God, know about the cross."

00:04:02.000 | I guess maybe one other thing.

00:04:04.000 | I'm sort of assuming faith here because they said, "What do I have to believe?"

00:04:09.000 | But you have to believe something about belief, meaning that it's required.

00:04:13.000 | If you say, "Oh, I get all that. I get all that.

00:04:16.000 | Now I'm going to work so that God will let all that count for me.

00:04:20.000 | I'm going to keep the law 85% so that all this redemptive work will count for me."

00:04:26.000 | You've missed it. You're not saved.

00:04:29.000 | What salvation requires that you believe is that you must believe

00:04:34.000 | instead of working for this salvation, that He has done what needs to be done.

00:04:39.000 | We receive it.

00:04:41.000 | As many as received Him who believed in His name,

00:04:44.000 | He gave them the right to become the children of God.

00:04:48.000 | So I think sin, God, cross, faith.

00:04:52.000 | To summarize the core, it would be truths around those four things.

00:04:57.000 | Pastor John was then asked a follow-up question.

00:05:00.000 | "In order to be saved, must someone understand the Trinity?"

00:05:04.000 | Here's what he said.

00:05:06.000 | They surely wouldn't have to know that word.

00:05:09.000 | They wouldn't have to be able to articulate it very well.

00:05:12.000 | But what they need to do is not deny essential things about it.

00:05:18.000 | So a person may never have heard of such things as the Trinity and be saved.

00:05:22.000 | But if you said to them, "Now, the Jesus you're believing in,

00:05:27.000 | is He divine or just a man?"

00:05:32.000 | If they said, "He's not divine," I think that's a major problem.

00:05:37.000 | So I'm saying the implications and pieces of the Trinity.

00:05:41.000 | Now, I don't think a person has to have ever heard of the Holy Spirit to be saved.

00:05:45.000 | Is that radical? I don't think so.

00:05:47.000 | If you get taught about the Holy Spirit and what He's done for you

00:05:51.000 | and say, "Oh, no, no, no, no. I don't believe any of that.

00:05:54.000 | I don't believe it took the Holy Spirit to save me,"

00:05:56.000 | then I'm going to question your salvation.

00:05:59.000 | But goodness, I just spent five minutes unpacking the gospel,

00:06:02.000 | and I didn't mention Him.

00:06:05.000 | And that's not because He's not essential.

00:06:07.000 | We would never believe without Him.

00:06:09.000 | But because I think knowing the details of how God got you to believe

00:06:15.000 | is not essential.

00:06:17.000 | But denying it once you know it would undermine essential things.

00:06:22.000 | That was Pastor John answering questions a few years ago.

00:06:25.000 | And as a follow-up to this very important discussion,

00:06:27.000 | see episode number 60, "Is Jesus the Only Way to be Saved?"

00:06:32.000 | You can find that episode and over 300 others

00:06:34.000 | in the free Ask Pastor John apps for the iPhone and Android.

00:06:38.000 | And be sure you update your app to get all the new features

00:06:40.000 | that make it really easy to search and browse all those episodes.

00:06:43.000 | We return tomorrow to hear Pastor John's concerns

00:06:46.000 | for this movement we call New Calvinism.

00:06:49.000 | I'm your host Tony Reike. We'll see you tomorrow.

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What Must I Believe to Be Saved?

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