"Believe and thou shalt be saved"

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he Bible tells us that the only way to know God, be saved and spend eternity with God is to believe in the finished work of Christ, God’s only begotten Son.  It is as simple as believing in a chair to hold you up when you sit down, or as simple as drinking a glass of water, or even walking through a doorway.  All the payment of your sin and the sin of the world is paid for by our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  There is no more work that needs to be done, and there is no more work that can be done.   

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” 

John 3:16

         The ONLY requirement for salvation is to believe.  Jesus said that receiving him as savior is as simple as taking a drink of water or walking through a doorway.  In the Old Testament, God gave an illustration of salvation to us by way of a plague sent on the nation of Israel, in Numbers chapter 21:6-9.  The nation of Israel was questioning God’s deliverance upon them.  In verse 6, the Bible says that God sent poisonous serpents upon the land and caused them to be bitten and many Israelites died.  Many of the Israelites came to Moses, confessing their sins and wanted Moses to pray and ask God to be merciful upon them.  Moses was commanded of the Lord to make a statue of a serpent and put it on the end of a pole and lift it up for all to see.  The only requirement for the deliverance of the people from their sickness was to look upon the brass serpent.  The idea of the people looking up to the serpent didn’t mean that all the people had to do was to glance at this serpent, but this was a two-fold meaning and it also meant to believe what the Lord has said.  Jesus himself refers to this event in the Gospel of John 3:14-16.

“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:  That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.  For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

In order for people to get better from this poisonous bite, one had to simply look and believe on what the Lord had said.  This was the only way of deliverance that the Lord provided and it was his plan to do so.  There was no other way that the people could get better.  In the same way, there is no other way that one can be saved and have eternal life, but to believe on the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross  

Acts 4:12 “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.”

2 Corinthians 6:2b “…behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.”