God created the world mainly by the Word of His mouth, saying, “Let there be.” He has since then done numerous other things in different ways with the same results. Below are a few of those times:
●
In
Egypt, He turned water into blood, but in Cana, He turned water into wine
(Exodus 7:20; John 6:6-10).
●
Once,
Jesus healed two blind men by touching their eyes because they confessed that
they believed He could heal them. He also told them it would happen because of their
faith. But on another occasion, Jesus spat on the ground, made mud with the
saliva, spread the dirt on a blind man’s eyes, and instructed him to wash in the Siloam pool (Matthew 9:28-29; John 9:6). Although methods were
different, the result was the same: sight was restored.
●
The
city of Jericho was conquered without weapons: the Israelites marched quietly
(except for the priests blowing their horns) around the city once a day for six
days and seven times on the seventh day. On the last round, they shouted, and
the walls collapsed. The strategy that gave them victory in the city of Ai was quite different from the strategy at Jericho. God instructed the Israelites to lay an ambush behind the city and attack it from the front so that when the Ai
troops engaged them and chased them out of the city, those in ambush would
attack the city from the rear and conquer it. In both cases, the Israelites
were victorious, but the strategies were different. (Joshua 6:1-20;
8:3-19).
Salvation,
however, is a one-way process; nothing else will do!
Salvation is the process by
which sinners are brought into a personal relationship with God because Jesus took mankind’s sin on Himself when He died on the cross and
rose again on the third day. Salvation is called by many names, including
being born again, becoming a child of God, and being adopted into God’s family.
Why do we need to be saved, and from what? Having inherited the sinful nature of our fore-parents, Adam and Eve, we are
alienated from God just like they were; the Bible says we are His enemies. We need our sins forgiven for the relationship to change from enemies to friends. If we don’t get
forgiven before we depart this world, our destination after this life will be
hell; it will be too late to do differently.
So, how does this process
work? The Bible tells us: “This is how God loved the world {people}: he gave
his one and only Son {Jesus} so that everyone who believes in him will not
perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). So out of God’s love for mankind,
He had Jesus die in payment for man’s sins. And the only way this would apply
to anybody is for each person to individually pray to God, admitting that they
are a sinner, and accept Jesus’ sacrifice in their place. And Jesus Himself
said clearly to His disciples, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one
can come to the Father except through me”
(John 14:6).
God forgives each person who asks for forgiveness and indwells that person with His Spirit. The Holy Spirit indwells the person as evidence that
the individual who prayed has become a child of God; his sins have been washed away,
never to be remembered. As the Scripture says, “He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is
from the west” (Psalm 103:12).
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