What Must I Do to Be Saved?

The Question

A jailer in Philippi once brought two prisoners, Paul and Silas, out of his prison and asked them the most important question a person can ask: "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" (Acts 16:30).

People answer that question in many ways. Some say a person must be baptized, or keep the commandments, or hold on to the end, and that no one can know he is saved until he dies. Others ask whether there is anything to be saved from at all. This study answers from Scripture alone, not from church tradition or any denomination's system. It asks seven questions in order. Each is answered briefly below, with the verses it rests on, and each opens into fuller pages for any reader who wants to dive deeper.

1. Is there a God a person must answer to? Settled

Yes, and Scripture says every person already knows it. Creation shows God plainly: "His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse" (Romans 1:20). Every person's conscience bears witness too. People who never had God's written law still "show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness" (Romans 2:15).

Scripture does not treat denying God as honest doubt. It speaks of people "who suppress the truth in unrighteousness" (Romans 1:18): they push away what they already know. God has also given proof that judgment is coming. He has appointed a day to judge the world by a Man, and "He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead" (Acts 17:31). The Bible's writers say they did not make their record up: "we did not follow cunningly devised fables... but were eyewitnesses of His majesty" (2 Peter 1:16).

What creation and conscience show leaves a person without excuse, but it cannot save him, because "faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God" (Romans 10:17).

2. What must a person be saved from? Settled

From sin and where it ends. "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23), and "the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23). In Scripture, death means separation. A living person is cut off from the life of God, and at death the spirit leaves the body. But death does not end a person: "it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment" (Hebrews 9:27).

All the dead will be raised, some to life and some to condemnation. The person who does not believe is not waiting for a verdict: "he who does not believe is condemned already" (John 3:18).

Most people picture the afterlife as heaven or hell. Scripture is more exact than that. Hades holds the dead until the judgment. Then Hades itself is cast into the lake of fire, which Jesus calls Gehenna: "This is the second death" (Revelation 20:14). English Bibles have used the word "hell" for both, which hides the difference. The lake of fire is the final punishment, and it is conscious and never ends: "these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life" (Matthew 25:46).

The bad news came with a promise. On the day sin entered the world, God told the serpent that the woman's Seed "shall bruise your head" (Genesis 3:15).

3. What did Jesus Christ accomplish? Settled

Salvation is found in Him alone. Jesus said, "No one comes to the Father except through Me" (John 14:6). He died in the sinner's place. Peter calls Him the One "who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree" (1 Peter 2:24). His blood satisfied God's justice, so that God can declare sinners righteous and still be "just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus" (Romans 3:26). And He died for everyone: "not for ours only but also for the whole world" (1 John 2:2).

He rose again in the body, and without His rising no one is saved: "if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins!" (1 Corinthians 15:17). His work is complete. On the cross He said, "It is finished!" (John 19:30), and nothing remains for anyone to add to it.

4. What must a person do to be saved? Settled

Believe the gospel. The gospel is what Christ did: "that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures" (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). Everyone who believes in Him is saved. To believe is to be convinced that God will do what He has promised, as Abraham was "fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform" (Romans 4:21), and to depend on Him rather than on one's own work. Scripture says what followed for Abraham: "it was accounted to him for righteousness" (Romans 4:22). God counted him righteous because he believed, and He does the same for everyone who believes in His Son.

Salvation is a gift: "by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God" (Ephesians 2:8). It is "not of works, lest anyone should boast" (Ephesians 2:9). Calling on the Lord and confessing Him come from believing; neither is a condition added to it.

Repentance is not a second step added to believing either. Many think repenting means feeling sorry enough, or promising to stop sinning. But in Scripture, repentance is neither one. Sorrow can lead to it, for "godly sorrow produces repentance" (2 Corinthians 7:10), and a changed life follows it as its fruit: Paul preached "that they should repent, turn to God, and do works befitting repentance" (Acts 26:20). Repentance itself is a change of mind toward God. A person stops depending on himself and depends on God's Son to save him, so the same turning can be called repentance or believing. When the Gentiles in Cornelius's house believed, the church said, "God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance to life" (Acts 11:18).

Salvation is received the moment a person believes, not at death or at the judgment. Jesus said the one who believes "has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life" (John 5:24).

5. What happens when a person believes? Settled

God does something in him at once. He is born of God. Those who believe "were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (John 1:13). God makes him His child: He gives "the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name" (John 1:12). He was not God's child before. Every person is God's creature, but Jesus told men who would not believe Him, "If God were your Father, you would love Me" (John 8:42).

Scripture calls this adoption. God takes the believer into His family with a son's place and a son's inheritance: "you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ" (Galatians 4:7). God sends "the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, 'Abba, Father!'" (Galatians 4:6), so the believer can speak to God as his own Father. It is true now, though not all of it is seen yet: "Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be" (1 John 3:2). Part of the inheritance is still ahead, "the redemption of our body" (Romans 8:23).

The Holy Spirit comes to live in him. There is no believer without the Spirit: "if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His" (Romans 8:9). And the Spirit places him into Christ: "by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body" (1 Corinthians 12:13). That baptism is the Spirit's work, not water.

God also sets him apart as holy. Paul told the Corinthians, "you were sanctified," in the same breath as "you were justified" (1 Corinthians 6:11), though many of them were still living like ordinary men. To sanctify is to set apart for God, and Scripture uses the word two ways: for what God did once, when a person believed, and for what He keeps doing until Christ comes. From the moment a person believes, God keeps making him holy by His Spirit. Believers "are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Corinthians 3:18). The believer learns where he falls short through God's Word and his own conscience, and when he will not listen, God's hand makes it plain. God will finish what He began: "He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:6). Holiness is what God works in a saved person, not a condition for being saved.

6. Don't some passages add other conditions, like baptism or good works? Settled

No. Scripture names one condition for receiving salvation: believing in Jesus Christ. Some passages are often read as adding another, and each one says something else when it is read in its own setting. None of this makes baptism, confessing Christ, or good works unimportant. It means none of them is how salvation is received or kept.

These are the passages. Each one is answered in full on its own page in the dive deeper section for this question, linked below:

• Baptism (Acts 2:38; Acts 22:16; 1 Peter 3:21)
• Confessing Christ before men (Matthew 10:32-33)
• Being judged by deeds (Romans 2:5-16; Matthew 25:31-46)
• Being "justified by works" (James 2:24)
• Enduring to the end (Matthew 24:13)
• The warnings in Hebrews (Hebrews 6:4-6; Hebrews 10:26-31)
• Paul's "if you continue" (Colossians 1:23)
• Doing His commandments (Revelation 22:14)
• Abiding in the vine (John 15:6)
• The Book of Life (Revelation 3:5; Revelation 22:19)
• Gentiles being cut off (Romans 11:22)
• Falling from grace (Galatians 5:4)
• Those who turned back (2 Peter 2:20-22)
• The righteous man who turns away (Ezekiel 18:24)

7. Can salvation be lost? Settled

No. Jesus said of His sheep, "I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand" (John 10:28). Nothing in all creation "shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:39). And a believer can know it now. John wrote "that you may know that you have eternal life" (1 John 5:13).

That does not make sin harmless. A believer who sins loses fellowship with God until he confesses it, and then "He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins" (1 John 1:9). God disciplines him as a son: "whom the LORD loves He chastens" (Hebrews 12:6). He can lose reward. If his work is burned, "he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire" (1 Corinthians 3:15).

A believer who sins is still born of God, and a lack of good works does not prove a person was never saved. Faith without works is useless, not proof that it was never faith. The people John says "went out from us" denied the Son; they were never believers. Good works are what salvation is for, not its price: believers are "created in Christ Jesus for good works" (Ephesians 2:10).

What's Settled

Settled (Scripture speaks clearly here):

• Every person already knows there is a God to answer to. Creation and conscience leave every person without excuse, and denying God is pushing away what is known (Romans 1:18-20; 2:15).
• God has given proof that judgment is coming, and Scripture is His word. He raised Jesus from the dead, and the writers recorded what they saw and what God spoke (Acts 17:31; 2 Peter 1:16, 21).
• Creation and conscience cannot save. Faith comes by hearing the message about Christ (Romans 10:14, 17).
• Every person has sinned, and sin brings death. Death is separation, from God's life and of the spirit from the body (Romans 3:23; 6:23).
• Death does not end a person, and judgment follows. All the dead will be raised, the unbeliever is condemned already, and the lake of fire is the final punishment, conscious and never ending (Hebrews 9:27; John 3:18; Matthew 25:46).
• Salvation is in Christ alone, and His work is finished. He died in the sinner's place, for the whole world, satisfied God's justice, and rose in the body (John 14:6; 1 Peter 2:24; 1 John 2:2; John 19:30).
• Salvation is received by believing, as a free gift, the moment a person believes. Repentance, calling on the Lord, and confessing Him are not conditions added to faith (Acts 16:31; Ephesians 2:8-9; John 5:24).
• At that moment God gives new life. The believer is born of God, made His child, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, placed into Christ, and set apart as holy (John 1:12-13; Romans 8:9; 1 Corinthians 12:13; 1 Corinthians 6:11).
• God keeps making the believer holy, and He will finish it. He does it by His Spirit, until Christ comes (2 Corinthians 3:18; Philippians 1:6).
• No passage adds a condition. Baptism, deeds, endurance, and the warnings of Scripture each mean something else in their own setting (1 Corinthians 1:17; Hebrews 10:14; Revelation 3:5).
• Salvation can never be lost, and a believer can know he has it. (John 10:28; 1 John 5:13)
• A believer's sin brings discipline and loss, never condemnation. Good works are the purpose of salvation, not its price (Hebrews 12:6; 1 Corinthians 3:15; Ephesians 2:10).

Every conclusion in this study is graded by how firmly the text establishes it, and all of them are graded Settled. Settled means Scripture speaks clearly here. Each conclusion rests on what the passages plainly say in their own context, and the Hebrew and Greek words behind them are shown and checked on the pages beneath. It is not a personal view or a guess from what the text leaves unsaid; it is what Scripture says. There are three other grades: Probable: my position (a strong inference from the text; competing readings are weak, and this is where I land), Open: my position (the text does not settle it, but this is where I land), and Open (the text does not settle it). No conclusion in this study falls under any of them.

Reflection

If you doubt there is a God, Scripture does not treat that as a lack of evidence. It says the evidence is the world you live in and the conscience you carry, and that God has given one more proof: a Man raised from the dead. Paul told people who did not know God that God "now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness" (Acts 17:30-31).

If you have never believed, the answer the jailer was given is the answer to you: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved" (Acts 16:31). There is nothing to add and nothing to earn, because salvation is "the gift of God" (Ephesians 2:8). The one who believes "has passed from death into life" (John 5:24), not later, but then.

If you have believed, you can know that you have eternal life (1 John 5:13), and you can rest on Christ's own word that His sheep "shall never perish" (John 10:28). That is not permission to live as you please. You were "created in Christ Jesus for good works" (Ephesians 2:10), and the Father who saved you also disciplines His children, because "whom the LORD loves He chastens" (Hebrews 12:6).