by Karla Perry

Created on: October 25, 2010

Christians often confuse the biblical language concerning salvation. Scripture clearly states that we are to believe in Jesus to be saved. However, it never meant that salvation is about believing the right doctrines.  Doctrines about Jesus, no matter how correct, do not save you.  Jesus saves. 

Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father except by me.”  We often think the way is believing the right things about Him, rather than the way being Him.  Jesus spoke to the religious leaders of His day and said that they search the Scriptures in vain, believing that in them they will find life.  He tells them that the life the Scriptures tell of is not found in them, but in Him. 

Having faith in Jesus isn’t about intellectually assenting to the correct doctrines about who He is. It’s about experiencing Him. It’s about connecting to Him relationally, and He with you, sealing you in Him which is your Salvation.  He is your Salvation.  Being in Him is being saved.  The Devil believes the right things about Him and trembles, but He has never tasted salvation. 

During the Great Awakening that swept through America, conversion experiences became more prevalent. People would tell of how they met the Lord, not how just how they decided to believe the right thing.  This is not to say that those who do not have an extravagant tale to tell are not really saved.  But this is to say that we cannot reduce salvation to having people accept the right doctrinal beliefs about Jesus and then proceed to be instructed on how to live like Him by doing what the church or the Bible tells you to do.  This is religion rather than the Gospel.  People will quickly become disenchanted and move on looking for something more authentic than that life. 

If it can be done under your own power without any aide or reliance on Him then it isn’t the fullness of what God can do in your life.  Salvation, like anything else in the Christian life, is supernatural.  C.S. Lewis recounts the day he realized the Gospel was real.  He said he was the most reluctant convert, because he knew that this new path, as great as it was, would cost him as it would be more than changing philosophies, but transforming to a new life. 

Charles Finney’s account of conversion, as well as his other accounts of encounters with God brings a realness of the presence of God to the reader.    There is power in those testimonies, even for the reader so far removed from the day these events occurred. 

Salvation is an encounter with Jesus that brings you fully into Him and He fully into you. It is also a walk, a journey with Him living out that new reality day by day. Since Jesus is salvation, that is a continual reality in one’s life as one lives daily in tangible relationship with Him. Believing right things about Him should be a part of this process, but it isn’t the whole.  His Spirit leads us in all truth, so we will grow in our knowledge of Him both intellectually and experientially as we grow in Him.  

The Scriptures proclaim that today is the day of Salvation.  Jesus is always the eternal now.  Salvation is always for now regardless of whether you have walked with the Lord for a day, a decade, or half a century, today is the day of Salvation.  Even if you have never walked with the Lord, today is the day.  He is always what we need today.  We can always start living today for He is the Way, the Truth and the Life.  Today is your day to come into His day.  

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