September 8, 2007
Newsletter Archives

From time to time God’s plan of salvation needs to be set out in a simple way so that those who are unfamiliar with its message may understand it. Here is an attempt to do just that. The word “saved” in everyday use implies a number of things. It indicates danger. When someone tells us they have been saved, we wonder what danger they were in. In the Bible sense the same is true. The danger is hell-fire. We have sinned against a holy God. He must punish our sins unless they are removed.
Secondly, the word “saved” is not an active word. It is passive. If people are “saved” they do not save themselves. Another person saves them. This is the simple purpose of the Lord Jesus Christ coming into the world. He died on the cross to suffer for sins. Almost every person who lives in North America knows this. Or do they? As a fact, it is well known. As a personal experience it is almost unknown.
This brings us to the third point. Unless a person faces the fact that he is helpless to save himself and depends on Christ to take his sins away, he will never be saved. Most people believe that Christ was punished for sins, but they do not see that His death is enough to take all their sins away. Thus people believe they have to “go to church” to be a Christian.
Others think they have to be a good person in the community where they live, or read their Bible regularly, or pray, or do some deed of merit. If this were true then Christ did not need to die for sins at all. If we can pay for our own sins, then why should He have to pay? Many of our church hymnals contain words we sing but do not seem to understand.
An old hymn states it this way:
There was none other good enough
To pay the price of sin.
He only could unlock the gate
Of Heaven and let us in.
In the Bible, Titus 3:5 states the truth this way, “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us….” Too often preconceived ideas block our ability to understand the simplicity of something. This is especially true in the spiritual realm. God’s plan for taking people to Heaven is really very simple.

Russ Nesbit