Saved

 February 133, 2023

A young man was driving through some of the South’s back roads when he came around a bend in the road and saw a boulder with “Jesus Saves” painted on it in huge red letters. As he drove on, he mused, “Well, if Jesus saves, maybe I should, too,” and decided right then and there to open an account at the bank.

What is required to be saved? We’ve drifted so far from traditional Christian beliefs that modern men and women don’t often think about such things. “Why do we need someone to save us,” they might ask; “What do we need to be saved from?” In a time when the concept of sin is antiquated, it’s a legitimate question. If our problems are merely human matters, or if there is no God who sits in judgment, the only thing we need to be saved from is our own mistakes and evil inclinations. For those, government always stands ready to step in with its solutions. Salvation? Not needed.

Only if we humans live in a world that is more than material, ie. a world that has a spiritual component to it, does salvation make sense. And if we live in such a world that needs saving, it stands to reason that we who are in trouble are not the ones to get us out of trouble. 

In Acts 15, a dispute arose over the requirements for salvation. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that salvation was needed. They understood that human depravity was not merely in how we treat one another, but was rooted in our rebellion against a holy God. Even the pagans of that era understood that mankind had offended the gods who needed appeasement.

The Gospel declares that this appeasement was made by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The only question left was whether something else needed to be added. It’s a question that lives on today. You can go to most any church and find requirements for belonging that are added to the simple faith in Jesus that was preached by the apostles. Dress codes, rejecting certain kinds of music, entertainment, people, are all additional requirements we have often added to repentance, confession, and faith in Jesus.

The early church decidedly rejected “faith AND…,” so much so that Peter’s address to the gathered assembly turned things around from how we usually speak. In v.11 he says, “We shall be saved in the same manner as they.” We would normally say, “they shall be saved in the same manner as we,” but Peter wanted to nail this down once and for all. We are made right with God, not by anything we can add, but by faith in Christ alone. That’s good news! God loves and accepts us just as we are so he can transform us into what we are not; holy men and women of God, redeemed by the blood of Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit for the glory of God the Father.