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Transcript 099C — Being "Good" Does Not Ensure Our Salvation
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Good evening. I have never called before, but I have a problem. I have been attending some Bible classes, and some of the things just do not coincide with what I feel. I feel that if you are a good person, and you do God's will, and you're not living a life of sin, when you pass away you go into the presence of God. And if you're not a good person, you're judged right away, and you're sentenced.
They believe that you go into the grave and that you just remain there as if you were asleep. I mean your body, of course, decays. But there's no consciousness until the resurrection. And this has disturbed me very much.
HC: Let's just talk about this a little bit, because you're speaking for many who are looking for truth. You can be grateful of one thing, and that is that you are searching for truth. God is disturbing your soul, and you want to find truth.
Now let me say at the outset, the Bible alone is the sourcebook of truth, and in its entirety it is the sourcebook of truth. And therefore you want to steer away from anything at all where the idea is held that God can bring truth from sources outside the Bible.
CALLER: This religion is strictly the Bible.
HC: Now the second point is, as you begin to search for truth, make sure that those who are involved in bringing you information are bringing you the whole Bible, everything that's in the Bible, that is the infallible word of God. Now for example, there are those who deny that God the Holy Spirit is a real Person of the Godhead. They think of the Holy Spirit only as a force. And that's contrary to the Bible. The Bible insists that the Holy Spirit is Eternal God, and that He is a Person like the Lord Jesus Christ is a Person.
Secondly, there are those who deny that Jesus Christ is Eternal God, and they think of Him as a God.
CALLER: The Son of God.
HC: Well, the Son of God, or someone who is a superman really, because we're gods also. But actually, it is true the Bible speaks of mankind as gods because we were created in the image of God. But Jesus, while He is shown to us to be the Son of God, is the only Son of God. In John 3:16, He is the only-begotten Son of God. He is God Himself, and the Bible is replete with references to the fact that He is Eternal God Himself.
And so any religious group at all that denies that Christ is Eternal God no longer has any way of providing salvation. Because, you see, if Jesus was simply a superman, if He was simply just more perfect than man, as something that we might try to attain to and maybe might be able to attain to on some basis or another, then He could never have been the Savior. He took upon Himself the sins of everyone who believes on Him and endured the terrible wrath of God, the equivalent of an eternity of hell on our behalf. He would have been consumed in the attempt.
And so those who deny that Christ is Eternal God, as Colossians 1 puts it, "In Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." When they deny this, then they no longer have a Savior, even though they talk about a Savior and even though they talk about the blood of Christ.
CALLER: They said we should believe in Jehovah God.
HC: But you see, the Bible talks about Jehovah God. But what does the Bible say in Isaiah 43? It says that "I am Jehovah, and besides Me there is no Savior." Now the Lord Jesus Christ came along and said that He is the Savior. He is the one who would save mankind from their sins. And so He has to be Jehovah God, because God says, "I am Jehovah, and besides Me there is no Savior." So we know that the Lord Jesus is Eternal God Himself.
So I would suggest this, that you seek out a church that holds to the whole Bible as the Word of God.
CALLER: I have a religious mother, and I have had a very good religious training. I went to a private school, and it started with Bible in the morning. And I know a great deal about the Bible. And I don't lie, and I don' t steal. I try to lead a very holy life.
HC: But you see, that will not save you.
CALLER: Now I am so confused, and I am so afraid. Am I saved, or am I not saved? If I was to pass away, what's going to happen to me?
HC: That of course is a very legitimate question.
CALLER: I never felt like this before. I mean I always felt that I was a child of God.
HC: Let's start at the beginning. First of all, we are not saved because we are a good person. Jesus did not come to call the righteous. He came to call sinners. And when God looks at you, and measures you and all of your deeds that you feel are quite good, and measures them against the standard of His perfect holiness, then He comes to the conclusion in Romans 3 that you are unrighteous, that you are a despicable sinner. And the Bible says, "The wages of sin is death."
And so the Bible starts right out and says that we're in trouble. We're in deep trouble. We're under the wrath of God because of our sins, and there's not one human being who stands outside of that indictment. We all stand there, outside of Christ, as being under the wrath of God.
Now that's the beginning of where we can go toward salvation, when we recognize the awful truth about ourselves. I'm a sinner, and I'm under the wrath of God. Then we face this promise, that "God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish [that is, should not be destroyed from this world into hell], but shall have everlasting life." Now the Bible is insisting here, therefore, that we place our trust entirely and without reservation upon the Lord Jesus Christ.
CALLER: I do. I always have.
HC: Now the way we do this, or the evidence that we have placed our trust in Him is that we repent of our sins and we cry out to God for mercy: "Oh Lord, have mercy on me. I don't want to sin anymore. And I believe what your Word says." As we read, for example, in 1 John 1:9, "If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
May I make first one suggestion? You're bewildered because you're listening to lots of other doctrines, and this is confusing you. And I would suggest that for the time being you forget about talking to anyone that brings their doctrines. And just spend time reading the Word.