Salvation (Part 1)

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Now we come to our last article which is about SALVATION AND THE FREE GIFT OF ETERNAL LIFE THROUGH CHRIST JESUS OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR. This article was also written by Pastor J.C.O’Hair.

( SALVATION)

The most wonderful and most important matter that has ever been presented to the human race to consider and experience is “SALVATION.” Salvation has to do with the never-ending eternity, as well as with man’s spiritual existence on earth. Like all other spiritual matters, the truth concerning eternal salvation is not primarily what man thinks and decides about it; but what God’s Bible says about it. Down through the generations the people on this earth have heard the message, which the Holy Spirit led the wise man of old to write, “There is a way that seemeth right unto man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” (Proverbs 14:12). Another very wise man of God, more than one thousand years later, was led to write: “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God; neither can be.” (I Corinthians 2: 14 and Romans 8:7)

Seeming right and being right are not the same. Neither is a man right in his thinking and decisions, because he is sincere. It is possible to be sincerely wrong, as the natural man generally is, concerning spiritual matters.

If there is anything clearly taught in the Bible, anything that should be self-evident to man, if his heart were not deceitful and if he were not deceived by Satan, it is the truth that man cannot save himself; that salvation is God’s work. There is an awful penalty that will be received by those who do not receive salvation. This is called “the wrath of God,” “perdition,” “the second death,” “the judgment of God,” “the damnation of hell.” There is another aspect or phase of salvation. After a person is saved in God’s way from the penalty of sin then God offers to that saved person salvation from the power and control of sin in this life.

There is no more wonderful, startling and glorious news that any person can hear, there is no one truth more vital and important that every individual should receive at full face value and believe with heart, mind and soul, than the truth found in God’s Bible, that salvation from the wrath of God, the damnation of hell, is not by what man does, or can do, for God, but what God does for man. Pause long enough to take this in; and to believe that when God forgives and redeems the believing sinner, it is according to the riches of His grace, which no human philosopher can begin to measure. (Ephesians 1:6 and 7). With this great truth, hear this great question, “how shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?” (Hebrews 2: 1 to 3). Remember that the GOSPEL OF CHRIST is the power of God unto SALVATION to every one that believeth. (Romans 1: 16).