Have you been saved?
When were you saved?
Do you want to be saved?
Some of you have probably heard some if not all of these questions at some point. If you are a CBC student, you likely hear some variation of them on Wednesdays at chapel or in some of your classes. Around here, they are unavoidable.
People talk about being or getting saved all the time. So much that I think it is necessary to stop and break down what salvation actually is at its core.
To understand salvation, we need to first understand what we are being saved from. The Bible tells us that when God first created the world humanity was without sin and untainted by evil.
This perfection did not last, however, because the first people, Adam and Eve, decided to break God’s rule and rebel against him. By doing this, they brought sin into their lives and established a sin nature in the lives of every human since.
I do not have to convince any of you that sin is present in the world and in the lives of every one of us. We are all corrupt, and even the most righteous of us still fall short of the perfection that humanity once had. This sin separates us from God because God is perfect and by his nature cannot be in the presence of anything less than perfect.
Romans 6:23 says, “The wages of sin is death.” This means that death is what we earn by having sin in our lives. This is not necessarily just physical death: it is spiritual. Since we have this sin, we are spiritually dead and therefore destined to face punishment for our sin. God is holy, and our sin goes against his holy Law. We are all sinners, so death is required.
Here is where salvation comes into play. Despite our sin, God still loved us and wanted a relationship with us. So, God came to earth in the form of his son, a man named Jesus, lived a sinless life, and was tortured and executed as a criminal. Since Jesus is God in the flesh, nobody had the power to take away his life, but in his love, he willingly laid his life down.
By doing this, Jesus took the punishment that humanity deserved upon himself. He faced God’s wrath so we would not have to face it. The wages of sin is death, and Jesus satisfied these wages when he died for us.
So what does it mean to accept Jesus’ salvation? It means that we come to him with repentant hearts and ask him to save us from the sin in our lives and the punishment in our futures. We can put our trust in him and in his power to keep us eternally free from sin. It means that we allow him to come into our hearts and begin the relationship with him that we were meant to have. It means that we accept Jesus’ love.
Let me finish the verse that I quoted earlier: “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
So, what does all this mean and why is it important? It means that the sin in your heart can be taken away and that you can find purpose and truth. Jesus loves you, and if you ask him to save you and trust in him, he will.
Salvation is literal. It literally means that a Savior is rescuing a soul from sin and punishment. So, for those who are not saved, those who are plagued by the evil in their lives, there is freedom found in Jesus. For those who have already accepted God’s salvation, remember the words of Paul in Ephesians 4:22-24.
Now, please forgive me as I ask you the question one more time.
Have you been saved?
