Cutting Straight

What must a person do to be saved?

Question 4 of 7. The message to believe, what believing is, where repentance, good works, and confession fit, and when salvation is received.

Where it begins

Ask most people how a person gets to heaven, and they will name something to do: be a good person, go to church, be baptized, keep the commandments, say a prayer. Many add that no one can be sure until the end, so a person can only do his best and hope.

The last question showed that Christ's work is finished. This question asks how a person receives what He did. A jailer in Philippi once asked it in so many words: "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" ().

The answer Settled

Paul and Silas gave the jailer a one-line answer: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved" ().

What a person believes is the gospel, a word that means good news. Paul sums it up: "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" (). It is news about what Christ did, not instructions for what the hearer must do.

Everyone who believes it is saved. Jesus said, "whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life" (). Scripture never calls believing a first step, with salvation waiting at the end of a process.

To believe is to be convinced that God will do what He has promised, and to depend on Him for it. Abraham was "fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform" (), and "it was accounted to him for righteousness" ().

Repentance is not a second step after believing. Repentance means a change of mind toward God. Believing is that same turn, so Scripture can use either word for it. When the Gentiles in Cornelius's house believed, the church said, "Then God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance to life" (). Sorrow can lead to repentance, and a changed life follows it, but neither one is the repentance itself.

No one earns any part of it. Salvation is by grace, favor God gives to people who have not earned it: "by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast" ().

Calling on the Lord and confessing Him with the mouth come from believing. Paul asks, "How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed?" (). They are what faith does, not a condition added to it.

And salvation is received the moment a person believes, not at death or at the judgment. The one who believes "has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life" ().

What God does in a person at that moment is the next question.

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What you can see for yourself

  • Taking someone at his word. Much of ordinary life runs on promises believed. A person takes the medicine because the doctor said it would help. Paul believed God the same way, in a storm at sea: "I believe God that it will be just as it was told me" ().
  • Sorry for getting caught. Most people have seen someone sorry for being caught who has not changed his mind about what he did. Paul names the difference: "godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death" ().
  • Nobody takes credit for a present. People may show off a gift and be thankful for it, but no one says he earned it. Credit goes with what a person earned: the promotion, the trophy, the house paid off. Paul says salvation is "not of works, lest anyone should boast" ().

Dive deeper

Each page below takes one part of this answer and shows the passages it rests on.