Five Things Essential for Salvation

            Some things are absolutely essential to the salvation of our souls. Here are five mighty works of God, without which none can enter into the everlasting glory of life in heaven with the Lord Jesus Christ.

1. A Divine Resolution — If you and I are saved, we will be saved not by our own choice and decision, but by the choice and decision made by God Himself in sovereign election and predestination before the world began (Ephesians 1:3-6). There is no possibility of salvation without God’s eternal purpose of grace in Christ.

2. A Divine Righteousness — God demands perfect obedience to His law, perfect compliance with His will, perfect righteousness (Deuteronomy 10:12; Matthew 5:20). Yet, no mere man can perform one good thing, let alone walk before God in perfect obedience (Psalms 14:3; 53:3; Romans 3:12). But, blessed be His name, all that God requires He performs for His chosen and bestows upon us by His grace. Christ obeyed God as our Representative, working out a perfect righteousness for us; and when He obeyed God for us, every chosen sinner obeyed God in Him (Romans 5:19-21).

3. A Divine Redemption — The holy Lord God also demands satisfaction for sin, a just and legal atonement for every transgression. It is written, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die” (Ezekiel 18:20). He will not overlook even the slightest iniquity. He Who is a just God must punish sin. He who is the righteous Lord, loving righteousness, must punish every transgression. How can He both punish the sinner to the full satisfaction of justice and freely forgive him of all iniquity, transgression and sin? Substitution! When the Lord Jesus Christ died in our stead, we died in Him (Romans 3:24-26; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Galatians 3:13-14). In the person and work of Christ the God of Glory is both “a just God and a Savior!” — But God demands more than a clean record. We cannot be saved without…

4. A Divine Regeneration — There can be no entrance into the kingdom of heaven without a new nature. Our Savior’s words are still true, “Ye must be born again.” You must be made a new creature, or you can never enter the New Jerusalem. You must have a new man created in you in righteousness and true holiness, or you can never enter into heaven. You must be made a partaker of the divine nature, Christ must be formed in you, or you have no hope of Glory. “Christ in you, the Hope of Glory” (Colossians 1:27) is that “Holiness without which no man shall see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14).

5. A Divine Resurrection — Our bodies must also be changed, because our bodies too have been corrupted and made corruptible by sin. Therefore “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 15:50). We must have new bodies for our souls, new bodies with which to serve our God in the new creation. Mortality must put on immortality. The natural body shall be sown in the earth and return to dust; but in the resurrection it shall come forth from the dust a spiritual body.

Don Fortner

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