The Overlooked Message of Salvation
It is true that we all need forgiveness from God. We all need to accept Jesus Christ as our personal Savior. We all need to believe in Jesus Christ. We all are in need of God’s grace and forgiveness. We all need to pray, as it were, the sinners prayer, and we all need to be covered by the blood of Jesus for the forgiveness of sins. But the most important requirement in the process of salvation is being completely overlooked and forgotten.
We all need to repent. We not only need to repent, but we desperately need to know how to repent. God, Himself, commands us to repent and be saved from this evil generation. “Repent or you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3). The Bible sternly warns, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 3:2; 4:17; 10:7).
There is quite a difference between the repentance of 2,000 years ago and today. When people repented in Jesus Christ’s day, the way they lived changed 180 degrees. The most permanent thing about the lives of the early believers was change. And change they did. They all became zealous doers of God’s word (Titus 2:14; James 1:22)!
How did they become doers of God’s word? How was their faith so different from thousands who profess Jesus Christ today? Their faith had works. It was not a dead faith. It was alive! Wherever true followers of Jesus Christ happened to be, they were zealous for good works (1 Peter 3:13; Titus 2:7). They did not do their works for the reason of salvation, which they all knew was a gift of God and could never be earned. Their good works were done for repentance as a result of being given the gift of salvation by God.
To those who have ears to hear, listen (Mark 4:23)! Repentance must result in a life of good works or it is not repentance! A person can say, “I repent, I repent, I repent,” all day long, but if that person’s life does not change or continually display a life of doing good, then repentance is dead all by itself. Not only that, but that person’s faith is dead also, for God’s word says faith without works is most certainly dead (James 2:14-26). Those whose faith is void of works are not practicing repentance and as a result, there can be no spiritual fruit on their trees and no spiritual growth in their daily lives before God. God must cause the growth but true believers must imitate God by keeping His Ways daily (1 Cor. 3:7; Eph. 5:1). In order for God to cause the growth, we must do the repenting.
We all know that Jesus Christ lived to glorify the Father by the Way He lived daily. We also know He glorified the Father by good works, not bad works.
Jesus commanded His true disciples to glorify the Father in heaven by good works and to let their lights shine by being examples of good deeds (Matt. 5:16; Titus 2:7). All those who profess to know Jesus Christ and remain worthless for good works not only deny Jesus Christ in their daily lives, but continue to live detestable and disobedient lives before God (Titus 1:16). They remain unrepentant.
God is angry and upset with thousands of people who profess His name but do not live His life daily by imitating Jesus Christ, His son. Why is He upset? Because these people are not coming out of sin by engaging in a life of righteousness, and as a result, they remain unrepentant.
How many who profess the name of Jesus Christ today are living like the true sheep of the Shepherd, Jesus Christ, as described in Matthew 25:33-40? How many are doing these works of righteousness, whether they be in words or deeds, in the name of Jesus Christ for the glory of the Father, as we are commanded to do in Scripture (Col. 3:17)?
Do you know that you have to force yourself to do good because doing what is evil comes quite naturally? Yes, you must force or press your way into the kingdom of God that is within you (Luke 16:16; 17:21). Did you know that every time you force yourself to do good for God you resist evil and build godly character? Did you know this is how you discipline your body according to godliness (1 Tim. 4:7)? Did you know this is the knowledge of the truth which is according to godliness (Titus 1:1)?
The word of God says if anyone comes to you with any other message than the doctrine that conforms you to godliness and the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ, that person is conceited and understands nothing (1 Tim. 6:3). If anyone does not abide in the teaching of Jesus Christ and the doctrine that transforms you into a godly, holy, upright and beautiful person, you are not to receive him into your house or give him a greeting (2 John 9-10).
Today, Jesus warns us not to be religiously misled, for many will come preaching in the name of Jesus saying, “Jesus is the Christ, I am He,” signaling that the end of the age is at hand (Mark 13:6). Jesus said, “Don’t go after them” (Luke 21:8; Matt. 24:4). Who are these men? They love to have others look up to them as being righteous and come to them for salvation. However, they do not produce righteous, guilt-free people for God. Like the Pharisees of old, they love to have the adoration of men instead of God. Many become very popular with men but very unpopular with God. That person who is esteemed or well-liked by men is detestable in the sight of God (Is. 2:22; Matt. 5:20; Luke 6:26).
Jesus said the world would love its own. What did He mean? The world loves ministers who produce hearers of the word and not doers (Jer. 5:30-31; Ezek. 33:30-32). People love to be told you cannot earn salvation by good works because it is a gift, but they hate to hear that you cannot repent unless you are careful to engage in good works and learn to do good for God (Titus 3:8, 14).
True believers are to be provoked, stimulated and to admonish one another to more love and good works (Heb. 10:24). These are not good works to be published in a church bulletin, but works to be done on a personal, daily basis in secret, not to be broadcast to others (Matt. 6:1). This is how you build a one-to-one relationship with Jesus Christ.
Someone might ask, “How can I help needy people? I don’t know of any.” Ask Jesus Christ to give you the eyes of a servant and His attitude of being a servant to others, and then be ready to serve! Ask Him to send you the needy, the hungry and the lonely so you can begin to put your discipleship into practice and build some godly good fruit on your tree (Col. 1:10). Good works done daily for God is how you bear much fruit and prove to be a disciple of Jesus Christ (John 15:8). Be like those true believers found in the book of Romans who, by perseverance in doing good, seek for glory, honor and eternal life (Rom. 2:7).
If you do not engage in a life of doing good, your life will never be blessed by God (Acts 3:26). It is God who renders blessings to men according to their deeds or works of righteousness (Rom. 2:6; Matt. 16:27). Remember always, the one who does good is of God (3 John 11, 1 John 3:10).
True believers are justified doers of the word (James 1:22; James 2:21-24; Rom. 2:13). They obey Jesus Christ and are sprinkled by His blood (1 Peter 1:2). Their sins are forgiven, while those who profess Jesus Christ and remain worthless for doing good deny Jesus Christ because they remain unrepentant (Titus 1:16). True believers are not to live for self any longer but for Jesus Christ only (2 Cor. 5:15; 1 Cor. 10:24).
We live for Jesus Christ by dying to sin and living to righteousness (Gal. 5:24). This should be obvious when we read Scriptures like, “But as for you, brethren, do not grow weary of doing good” (2 Thess. 3:13). Those who do not do good for God are going the wrong way. It should be even more obvious that if the Lord is furious when one of His followers becomes lukewarm in regard to doing good, that we should not be lukewarm in our commitment to doing good for God (Rev. 3:15)! God says He will vomit out those who are lukewarm (Rev. 3:16).
Scriptures are often quoted out of context. We hear, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God; not a result of works, that no one should boast” (Eph. 2:8-9). But isn’t it time we read the next verse, which makes the message balanced? We are created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them (Eph. 2:10)! That means we are to live a life of doing good works for God’s glory (Matt. 5:16). What’s wrong with doing that?
Another set of Scriptures that is quoted out of context is Titus 3:5-7. “He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” These few Scriptures do not do away with a life of good works. The very next verse admonishes us to be careful to engage in good works (Titus 3:8).
Jesus Christ is purifying for Himself a people for His own possession who are zealous and on fire or hot for good works, and have purified themselves through the power of God’s Holy Spirit by doing so (Titus 2:7). There are millions out there who profess Jesus Christ with their mouths but their lives deny Him daily (Titus 1:16)!
Don’t feel bad, there’s absolutely no need to feel guilty when you can start to do good right now and repent. Just set your mind to please God each day in all you think, do and say. Then study God’s word each day to show God you mean it. Obey the Scriptures that say we should go out and do good.
If you have not heard this message before, it is because you were listening to man and not to God. When you repent by doing good works and by studying God’s word daily, if there’s something you do not understand, ask God. He is not deaf to someone who wants to serve Him by doing His Will of good works on earth as it is being done in heaven (Matt. 6:10). Remember, study your Bible and stop reading it. You can read the Bible for a lifetime and never know it unless you study it. The very next step is putting it into practice by doing good daily as Jesus Christ gave us example to do.
Can you begin to realize that if you didn’t live to please God each day by imitating the Way Jesus Christ gave us example to live, then Jesus Christ lived His life in vain as far as your spiritual life is concerned (1 Cor. 11:1; 1 John 2:6)? Don’t you think you’re going to have to force yourself to do good and to do what is right for God in thought, word and deed until it comes from your heart? The Apostle Paul had to do this very same thing (1 Cor. 9:27). We have been bought with a price. Therefore, we are to glorify God in our bodies by engaging in lives of doing good for God.
Jesus’ only purpose in life was to do good each day for the glory of His Father. This must be every true believer’s attitude in life until the return of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ says He will allow those who overcome and endure to the end by doing His works—which He gave you example to do—to sit with Him (Rev. 3:21). Jesus emphatically says that many of His true followers will do greater works then He did (John 14:12). Do you believe Him?
The prophets of old were sent by God every time the false ministers made crooked the straight Ways of the Lord. The ministers became full of deceit and fraud, and as a result, became sons of the devil, like the Pharisees of the New Testament (Acts 13:10). They were constantly making crooked the straight Ways of the Lord by perverting God’s simple, eternal message. That message was, “Overcome evil by doing good so you will abide forever” (Psalm 37:27; Rom. 12:21). One of the reasons God sent John the Baptist as a prophet was to teach God’s Ways of repentance, and straighten out the message, which the Pharisees had perverted (Mark 1:3).
People hate to be told they have to repent by doing good. In the past, they hated that message so much that they killed many of the prophets God sent, and they will kill more in the future. The message was repeated over and over by the prophets of old (Is. 1:16-20). Their message was called the ancient paths where the good way is (Jer. 6:16).
Did not our fathers have plenty to eat and drink when they practiced righteousness and honesty one to another? That’s when everything went well for them. They took care of those who were needy and afflicted and constantly did good in His sight. Isn’t this what it means to know the Lord (Jer. 22:15-16)? “Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46-47). Hosea had a novel way of saying the same message of righteousness. Study Hosea 10:12-13 and Zephaniah 2:3 which say the same message of righteousness.
Under the Law of Moses, the Israelites were required not only to practice righteousness by continually doing good for God, but they were also required to keep the entire Law, including holy days, animal sacrifices and many other ordinances (Gal. 5:1-4; Col. 2:16-17). We, under the New Testament, are freed from the works of the Law of Moses by engaging only in works of righteousness for God (Rom. 5:20-21).
Pure religion is to help others in need and by doing so, to keep ourselves unstained by the world. We can keep ourselves from worldliness, which is sin, by serving others in need and by continually doing good for the glory of God. This is the truth! You know it is the truth, therefore you are required to live it (Ezek. 3:17-21; 33:7-8, 13-16, 31-33)