What is Salvation?

  

Read 2 Corinthians 5:11-21  

The question of “Why am I here?” has haunted mankind since after the Garden of Eden. What is my purpose? Who am I? People have tried to explain this many different ways, but there is only one person who can answer this cry satisfactorily – God.

We are created by God. We are created for a purpose, created by design, created because He loved and loves us (Genesis 1:26-27; 2:20-24). He made us in His image – which means we were created to have an eternal soul, the ability to choose, a consciousness of self, and a consciousness of God. We are the only creatures on this earth with the ability to conceptualize ideas. But being made in His image also means He intended us to be His representatives in other parts of His creation. Adam and Eve were given responsibility for the garden, and later their descendants were given responsibility for the earth.

When Adam sinned it caused all of us to be born with the same defect. We are born spiritually dead. Adam and Eve chose to disobey God’s commands. They chose to know evil and to doubt God's guidance and His goodness. This resulted, as God had promised it would, in their deaths. The immediate death Adam and Eve suffered was spiritual death, and ultimately it meant physical death. This dead spirit would be passed on to their offspring. Every human being born since has been born with the same dead spirit inside.

When we accepted Jesus as our Savior, He gave us a new, living spirit. Since God is Spirit (John 4:24), it is man’s spirit that is able to interact with Him. With a dead spirit we cannot interact with Him, obey Him, trust Him, or in any way please Him. So when we are born again, with the ability to love God, it is because He made our spirit alive again.

He decided to provide a way for us to come back to Him. He provided a way, that we could choose, to become His.  With this choice, He gives our spirit eternal life (the Bible calls it salvation). With our new, living spirit we are able to talk to Him and obey Him.

There is only one way we can come to God. It is His way. It is a way which was completed without any action or effort from us. We cannot contribute a single thing to it. The Way is Jesus, God’s Son, by the death He died for us, and it is sealed – secured – by Jesus’ resurrection from death.

How can we gain this salvation? The Bible shows us the way.

*We must realize we are sinners – Romans 3:23

*We must acknowledge that all we deserve, or will ever deserve, is death – Romans 6:23

*We must believe in Jesus and confess (acknowledge) Him as Lord – Romans 10:9-10

*Accept His gift by faith – Ephesians 2:8

*We must choose to serve Him – Joshua 24:15