What We Believe About Salvation Series

The next question is how? How does God save us? This is the big question that I want to get answered today. It is the question that everybody needs to know the answer to because the spiritually dead have lots of answers and none of them are truth. The truth is told to us in our main verses, verses 8 and 9. We are saved by grace and through faith. Now, this is where some people make a bit of a mistake. Some people read this and think, "Well, okay, grace is God's part and faith is my part. Between me and God, we will get me saved. It's a deal, God. You do your part and I'll do mine." Right? Not exactly. See, the problem with that is...we are dead. Remember? Dead people can't do their part to make themselves alive. If we could do even that much, we could say that we did something to save ourselves and God doesn't want to share His glory with us nor does He need our help. So, how does this work?

In Romans 12:3 it says that God gives everybody "a measure of faith." A measure is not much but it is enough and He gives it to everybody. The question is, what are you going to do with it? Think of faith like a muscle. When you are born, you are given muscles but they aren't very powerful. But first you start to lift your little head. Then you roll over, then walk a few steps. Pretty soon you are running and climbing and able to lift heavy things and before you know it, you have big muscles.

Faith is the same way. God gives you a small measure of faith. You don't understand much of anything at first but you believe it and you act on it and it changes your life. Then you see how God works through your faith. You still don't understand everything but you see more and more that God is trustworthy and pretty soon you have some real muscular faith. But if you start out saying that you were saved by God's grace, our faith that he has given us AND anything else...that is wrong. That is actually blasphemy and don't do that. Paul says that we are saved by grace and through faith. But I hear ya. Todd, uh, where does he mention being baptized as being part of our salvation? He doesn't. Where does it talk about taking the Lord's Supper as part of being saved? It doesn't. What about the part where we have to be really, really good? Nope. See, all of that stuff is good, even commanded to do for people that are saved but it has no part in the salvation process. "By grace and though faith." Period. Do you know why he saves us like that? Verse 9 tells us that it is not by works so that we can't brag about it. You know what bugs me? It bugs me when I hear people brag about being able to do something and then they say, "It ain't bragging if it's true." Right? No. It's still bragging and nobody wants to hear you bragging about anything, especially God. He doesn't want you to be able to brag about doing the least little bit because every little bit you take credit for is the little bit that is taken away from Jesus dying on the cross to pay the price. We are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus alone.