Category Salvation & Judgement

or “What Must I Do To Be Saved?”

Nothing is of greater importance than to know the true God and to know what is required for us to be on good terms with the true God. The only way to know God and to know what God has said concerning our condition and relationship with God, is to study from the Bible what God has revealed concerning our sin and His salvation.

With every discussion of what we must believe, the answer to what constitutes the message of the gospel of salvation must begin with what the Bible says about The Gospel, so we will look first at those passages in which the Bible writers used the specific word “gospel”...

Some people say Christians are guilty of judging those outside of passing judgment on non-Christians because they don’t share our faith. I am not qualified to judge anyone, as a sinful person who deserves condemnation as much as anyone else, but I am qualified to communicate Truth, and Truth necessarily applies to everyone by its nature.

A lot of people have been told that all religions are “the same” and should therefore be considered equivalent, but they don’t realize that the different religions teach very different things about God and man’s relationship to God, as well as giving mutually exclusive answers to the key questions of life: the origin, purpose, meaning, and destiny of humankind...

You ask why a good God would allow a negative circumstance to happen; but what would you recommend as the alternative?

 Most negative circumstances are direct results of human decisions. While it is true that we can be negatively affected by decisions made by others, which may seem “unfair”, the fact remains that those were human choices, and choices made contrary to God’s right – ness.

 So, should God interfere in the decisions of men to prevent every choice that may have a negative impact on other people? Some have said that God should have “stopped” Hitler, or Pol Pot. He should have “stopped” the dozens of school shooters, He should “stop” the drug lords.

 How exactly should He stop them? Wipe them out? When should He wipe them out: when they begin to ‘go bad’? Should He prevent the...

God could have built one people from Isaac making of both sons one holy nation. But it was His purpose to make a distinction between the two men. Esau sold his birthright. Jacob sought a birthright he did not possess.

Why did God choose Jacob? The Bible does not say, it only states that He chose him to make a people of him. Jacob desired a blessing to which he was not naturally entitled. The Bible does not say that God placed that desire in Jacob’s heart, nor caused him to seek the face of God. In fact, Jacob’s desire was motivated by sin, and empowered by sin – deception and supplanting of the natural heir.

Esau, on the other hand, was unfaithful and ungrateful, despising his birthright for the immediate satisfaction of his natural desires...

Chosen Father

God chose Abraham to father the nation of Israel. Out of a wilderness of idolatrous people[1], God called to Abram to leave his country, his people, and his father’s house to travel to a new land which God would show to him. We see nothing about Abram that would distinguish him from the people around him, to cause him to have special consideration from God, and God does  not tell us why Abram was chosen. We see only that he was chosen.

In the same way that God chose Abram to father the earthly nation, God chose Jesus Christ to father the spiritual nation, the family of the redeemed of God. In election, Abraham is a type of Christ, being the chosen vessel through whom God would birth a holy people to Himself.

God appointed Isaac, the miraculous son of Abraham, to father a n...

“…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God….” Romans 3:22 

“the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Romans 6:23 

“for God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life….He who believes in Him is not condemned, but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the Name of the only begottenSon of God.” John 3:16,18 

“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by Me.” John 14:6 

“He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.” 1 John 5:12 

“Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is no other name under heav...

John 12:28       “Father, glorify Thy name. Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.”

Some people have come to believe wrongly that when the Bible refers to God ‘glorifying His Name’, that it refers to some strange situation in which God proclaims His own greatness to Himself. This unbiblical idea is bizarre; and has been a stumbling block to some unbelievers who, having believed that God spends His time praising Himself, consider such a being to be the epitome of arrogance.

The verb “to glorify” means to bring glory or honour to someone or something. While we may express the glory of something by speaking its praise, we do not bring honour to it or show its honour simply by speaking...

Isaiah 64: 5-6 “You meet him who rejoices and works righteousness, those who remember You in Your ways. Behold, You are angry, for we have sinned. In those is continuance, and we shall be saved. But we are all as an unclean thing; and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags…”

All our good deeds and right actions are just a dress-up to masquerade as ‘worthy’ of God’s approval.It is not enough to put on an outfit to appear as something we are not. All of our ‘goodness’, as great as it may be, is not goodness if it is not a reflection of our communion with God. If we are in rebellion against God, we are automatically evil. Any performance on our part is reduced to just that: a performance; a show of our good impression of ourself. 

Goodness is defined by God...

When man chooses to refuse God, why does he then accuse God of abandoning him to the consequences of his independence? While demanding that God exercise no authoritative influence over his life, he continues to expect Him to exercise exceptional benefit in interfering with any negative influences that may cross his path.

When we meet other people who desire the kind of relationship with us, one in which they only desire our presence to improve some otherwise unpleasant reality in their life, we call those people “users”.

Somehow, men have come to believe that because God is abundantly able to affect any aspect of our material existence, that if He is a good God, He is also obligated to do so to our advantage...

Even with the hurting Jesus spoke of sin, because without sin, the message of the gospel is meaningless. If we had no sin, we would not be enemies of God, we would not be under His judgment, we would not need reconciliation with God, nor salvation from His justice. 

Most people are not murderers, rapists, bank robbers, and child abusers. Most people’s sins are of the ‘milder’ sort: lying, gluttony, jealously, gossip, laziness, cowardice. We don’t see ourselves as ‘bad’ people because we don’t see our sins as ‘bad sins’. Consequently, most people expect God to freely allow them access to His glory on the basis of their being ‘good’ people, and do not see a need for Christ to save them...