How does God say I can be saved?

God is holy and God is love. His holiness demands that our sin be punished infinitely. His love provides a way for us to be saved from this punishment. How is this possible? Another was willing to suffer what we deserve. Our substitute had to be a sinless man, able to suffer the infinite anger of God against our sin. The only one able to take our place was God’s only Son.

The greatest display of God’s love unfolded as His Son left heaven to become a man. Born of a virgin 2000 years ago, Jesus Christ lived with His creation. Unable to sin Himself, yet He showed compassion to sinners all around Him. However, men hated Him because His holiness revealed their sinfulness. He willingly allowed them to nail Him to a cross of wood outside Jerusalem. They suspended Him so they could sit and watch Him die. The climax of God’s plan of salvation had arrived as God covered the earth with darkness. The Bible tells us that for three hours He laid on His Son the infinite punishment we deserve for our sin. The darkness was broken when Jesus Christ called out with a loud voice "It is finished". He had accomplished the mighty work, God’s great plan of salvation.

After three days in death, Christ Jesus rose from the dead. This is evidence to all that saw him afterwards and to all who read God’s word that Christ’s suffering completely satisfied His father. He was victorious over death itself – the ultimate consequence of our sin.

God’s plan of salvation brings us into the good of Christ’s suffering, death, and victory. "For when we were yet without strength, in due time, Christ died for the ungodly" (Romans 5:6). "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16).

The Problem of Sin

If we do good works and we are, in general, a good person, isn’t that enough to earn our salvation? The Romans Road initially starts describing the sinful nature of man. According to Romans 3:10, we all start in the same condition in which we are sinners. No man is righteous, not even one. 

Romans 3:23 backs it up by saying we have all sinned, with no exemption nor distinction. And that we are all at a far distance from God’s holy presence. How did that happen? Romans 5:12 tells us that it was because of one man, Adam, sin entered the world. Being the first of God’s human creations, he passed that sin to us, generation to generation.  

You can argue that you are generally a good person compared to others who do awful things like steal or cheat. That’s our human standard, and that’s how we define being “good.” However, Paul here reminds us that the bar is not another person nor us. It is God. And when we compare ourselves to His holiness, we don’t stand a chance. None of us do. 

The Wages of Sin

What then is the result of that sin? The first part of Romans 6:23 is straightforward: death is the only way to pay for that innate sin. He’s not only talking about physical death but spiritual death as well. That’s how serious the problem is, and that’s how grave the consequence is.

When we die, our soul detaches from our body. That’s physical death. Spiritual death, on the other hand, is when our soul gets separated from God. What’s frightening about this is that this separation is not temporary but eternal. If we die while we are in our sinful condition, we no longer have that chance to live a life in eternity with the Lord. 

Because of sin, we have to face the inevitable and painful consequence of dying physically and being eternally separated from God. 

The Gift of God

But God, being rich in grace and mercy, made way for us to reconcile with Him. He gave us hope for a life lived in eternity with Him, and that hope is through His only Son, Jesus Christ. That is what the second half of Romans 6:23 presents to us. 

God does not want to abandon us in our sinful position. He doesn’t want our story just to end there. His love for us is so great that He was willing to make way for us to get out of that hopeless situation. Romans 5:8 shows us the evidence of God’s love. 

Paul reminds us in this verse that even while we were still living in deep sin, Jesus had already made the ultimate sacrifice of dying in our place. As it affirms in Isaiah 53:5, Christ bore our sins, suffered, and died for us so that we may be healed and have peace. Because of His suffering, death, and resurrection, we can have that peace, hope, and assurance that we can spend our eternity with God.

How, then, should we respond to this?

Our Response to God

When someone gives us a gift, we usually respond with gratitude, right? With this beautiful present that God offers us, can we just respond with a simple “Thank you,” and that’s it? 

Let’s go back and recall the first two parts of the journey: the problem of sin and its penalty. Thinking about it, it’s not an ordinary matter nor a small dilemma that we can fix quickly by ourselves. The problem involves our soul and our life in eternity. That is why God calls us to respond thoughtfully and sincerely as well. Paul tells us in Romans 10:13 that we are to call on the name of the Lord for us to be redeemed. 

We should also understand what calling on the name of the Lord means. The verses from Romans 10:9-10 explain that to us. We are not only to verbally declare that Jesus is Lord, but we must also believe with all our hearts that God had raised Christ from the dead. It asserts in John 3:16 that because God loves the whole of humanity, He sent His one and only Son to be the ultimate sacrifice. And that whoever believes in Jesus will not perish but rather have eternal life. 

So it is both by openly declaring this and accepting that Jesus is Lord entirely with our hearts that we will receive our salvation. That’s how sincere our response should be, for God had bought us with a high price.