Suppose for a moment that you took a blank sheet of paper and wrote this question on it, “What must a sinner do to be saved?” Then, suppose that you took that piece of paper to the ten closest “churches” to your home and asked for their response. After recording their responses on that sheet of paper and reviewing them, would it surprise you to find that those “churches” did not all answer in the same way, but you received varying, even conflicting, responses to the one question (possibly even ten different answers)? Such is the reality of the world of religious division in which we live. So what should you do?
Do you believe that God has given differing (and even conflicting) answers to the question of how a sinner is to be saved, or is it man who has confused this matter? That’s not a hard question to answer. We know that God has one gospel (Gal. 1:6-9) and one way to be saved (Acts 4:12). It is only through Christ and His (not man’s) prescribed plan of salvation that man can be freed from sin.
Man is saved by the grace of God, but not by grace alone. Forgiveness of sins would be impossible if it were not for the grace of God! “By grace you have been saved” (Eph. 2:5). “The grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant” when “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Tim. 1:14-15), “by the sacrifice of Himself” (Heb. 9:26). God is the one who does the saving, and through His grace He has done “His part,” but salvation also requires man to do “his part.”
Man is saved by faith, but not by faith alone. The foundation of God’s part in man’s salvation is His grace. The foundation of man’s part in his salvation is his faith, specifically believing with all of his heart that “Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” (John 20:30-31). For Jesus warned, “…if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins” (John 8:24). Believing that Jesus was “raised from the dead” is essential (i.e., is the foundation) to being “saved” (Rom. 10:9), but salvation is “not by faith only” (Jas. 2:24).
Man is saved by works (of faith), but not by works alone. Scripture unequivocally affirms that “faith” which “does not have works” is “dead” and cannot “save,” for “a man is justified by works” (Jas. 2:14-26). True faith, Jesus declared, is “the work of God” (John 6:28-29), for genuine faith leads one to repent of his sins (Acts 2:37-38), confess his faith in Jesus (Rom. 10:9-10) and be immersed into Christ (Gal. 3:26-27), in order to have every sin washed away by the gracious blood of Jesus (Acts 22:16; Rev. 1:5). Only then is man saved by “the working of God” (Col. 2:11-12).
The church of Christ teaches and practices the plan of salvation detailed in the New Testament. Does your church?