Salvation is the free gift of reconciliation to eternal life with God through the shed blood of Jesus.
When God created the world it was perfect. Sin entered the world when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This first sin separates us from God.
Genesis 2:16-17 “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
Genesis 3:6 “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.”
Genesis 3:22-24 “Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.”
A holy God cannot have sin in His presence. Sin must be punished. That punishment is eventual physical death and spiritual death, or separation from God.
Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Salvation is the free gift of reconciliation to eternal life with God. We need reconciliation to God because we are sinners.
Romans 3:23 “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”
Romans 5:12 “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—”
The only way to be reconciled to God is through His son, Jesus.
John 14:6 “[Jesus said] I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except through me.”
God sent his only Son, Jesus, who is 100% God and 100% man, to live a sinless life and dies a sacrificial death on the cross. He took the sins of all people on His shoulders and paid the one time price (death) for our sins.
John 1:1-2 & 14 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
Colossians 2:9 “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.”
Romans 5: 6-11 “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
His rising from the dead proves His power over death. He is able to save us from physical death and spiritual death.
1 Corinthians 15:21-22 “For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.”
Salvation is a free gift given through God’s love and grace and received by our faith. It is not the act of confessing your sin, but rather admitting that you are a sinner and that you are separated from God and can’t reconcile on your own, believing that Jesus is God’s Son and that He paid the price of your sin when he died on the cross, and that he was raised again to life after three days, granting us victory over death and the hope of an eternity with Him.
Ephesians 2:8-9 “For by grace are you saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast.”
Roman 10 :1 “Because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved.”
John 1:12-13 “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
When a person becomes saved, the Holy Spirit indwells them and they become a new person.
Titus 3:5-7 “he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”
2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”
Ephesians 4:22-24 “to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”
The Holy Spirit is the seal on the believer that they have been redeemed for eternal life.
Ephesians 1:13-14 “In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.”
Jesus guarantees that there is nothing that can break that seal. Not even sin.
John 10:28-30 “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”
Roman 8:37-39 “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Knowing we cannot lose our salvation and that God’s grace covers all our sins, does not give us license to sin. However, being saved doesn’t mean we won’t sin. The Holy Spirit produces a desire to live like Christ, but our flesh is in constant battle against the Holy Spirit.
Romans 6:1-4 “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”
James 3:2 “For we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body.”
Galatians 5:16-17 “But I say, walk by the [Holy] Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.”
Philippians 2:13 “for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.”
Galatians 5: 22-23 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.”
We will not be perfect until we reach Heaven. No matter how strong our walk with God is, we’ll still sin. When we sin after we’re saved, it strains our relationship with God, but we are still His children, still saved. Just like we are still the children of our earthly father even when we purposefully damage the relationship. Confessing our sin doesn’t make us saved again because the relationship isn’t severed. It renews the strained relationship, just like the relationship with your earthly father can be fixed with an apology and forgiveness.
1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Our confidence that we are going to Heaven when we die should not be in the act of confessing every single sin, but rather in the power of Jesus’ death on the cross and His resurrection to save us once and hold us secure forever.
1 John 5:13 “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God.”