(Acts 16) provides one example of the many adventures and challenges faced by the early Christian church. It recounts the preaching of Paul and Silas, their persecution, and their imprisonment. Rather than feeling discouraged, while in jail the two Christians prayed and sang hymns. An earthquake shook the prison, the doors opened, and the chains of all the prisoners were loosed. The jailer, greatly concerned, approached the two, falling before them and pleading, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” Paul and Silas replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:30-31).
Biblical Salvation
What then is biblical salvation? It’s not by works, legalism enlightenment, and it’s not universal. What, then, must we do to be saved? It’s important to keep in mind that salvation encompasses what God has done for us, not what we can do for Him. God has taken the initiative in His plan of redemption, reaching out to us through Christ.
What Jesus did for you
Jesus is all of the above and much more. So what did He do for you that He is calling you to believe in?
jesus lived a perfect life so that He could offer Himself on the cross in your place as the only sacrifice that would satisfy God’s justice for your sin:
“He [God] made Him [Jesus] who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him”
Jesus is Lord of all
(36 Peter) says that Jesus “is Lord of all”; the phrase “Jesus is Lord” became a sort of mini Christian creed very early on in the church.
“To confess Jesus as Lord means to acknowledge him as the one who shares the identity of Israel’s God. In the Old Testament Scriptures God is named YHWH, Kyrios, Lord; and in the New Testament Jesus is revealed as the one who bears that name. So to confess Jesus as Lord is to set him above all other loyalties.”
One cannot be “saved” without submitting to Jesus as Master, Leader and Teacher.
He must be the One to whom our highest loyalties and ultimate affections are given.
That is what it means to say that Jesus is Lord of all.
