The Big Question 33: How Can I Be Saved?

• Dr Eliezer Gonzalez
• Gospel
• Grace
• Salvation

Mar 18, 2019 1018

How can I be saved?

Religion has usually ended up turning the issue of how to be saved into a a very complicated affair. There are all these teachings you need to know, things you have to comply with, and standards you have to maintain! As a result, there are lots of people who don’t want to be Christians at all!

Well, the good news is that those things have nothing to do with how to be saved. I want to peel back the layers and go to the core – the essentials.

So first, what is salvation? In the Christian faith, salvation means that your status is changed from someone who is unworthy of eternal life, to someone who has been given the gift of eternal life. That’s the prime meaning of salvation. From that, everything else flows. Your life is transformed through the power of God, and you experience love, joy, and peace.

So, how can you be saved?

Let’s look first at ways not to be saved.

Well, as surprising as it may be to some, you’re not saved by going to church. And you’re not saved by avoiding doing bad stuff and doing good stuff instead. And neither are you saved by knowing a lot of things about the Bible.

All of these things may be good things to strive for. But they’re not how you are saved!

The first thing to understand is that its root, salvation has nothing to do with what you do, where you go, or even what you know. Instead, it has with what Jesus, and what he has done.

Salvation is Good News, but to appreciate and really understand the Good News, you need to get your head around the bad news first. And the bad news is that all of humanity is fallen and lost, separated from God, and we are helplessly unable to rescue ourselves or save ourselves. Our thought and our desires are warped by sin, from the very core of our beings.

So, what is the only way you can be saved?

Here’s the more complicated version from the theologian Paul in the Bible:

For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. ²⁴ Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. ²⁵ For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past (Rom 3:23–25, NLT.)

I’m sure you’re asking me for the simple version now, right? Well, here it is:

You can be saved by go of your own performance as the basis of your salvation, and trusting in Jesus for what he has already done to save you.

That sounds very much like having a relationship of trust with Jesus, and that’s exactly what it is!