What makes us saved

However, some of the seed fell on good soil and produced a prodigious crop of thirty to one hundred times what was sown Matthew The pathway soil represents the hearer who is not interested at all in the things of Christ.

Since birds are sometimes a symbol of evil in the Bible, Jesus may well be referring to satanic deception which keeps these people from hearing the Gospel at all 2 Corinthians Nevertheless, whatever, they reject the Gospel completely Matthew A religious experience is no guarantee that personal salvation with Christ has occurred. Surface change is not the same as transformation of the heart. Feelings may change without transforming the soul.

There is no repentance, no remorse over sin, no contrition, no brokenness, no recognition of the need for a Savior. The thorn-infested soil represents hearers who are distracted by too many other things. When the Sower was sowing the ground looked clean enough—but it was full of grab grass. The result was that the good seed and the dormant weeds grew together; but the weeds were so strong that they throttled the life out of the seed, and it died, while the weeds flourished Matthew The weeds are any distractive things which take precedence over the things of Christ.

The good soil represents fruit-producing Christians. The seed on the good soil took deep root and produced flourishing plants that yielded a prodigious amount of fruit Matthew Jesus said, "By their fruit you shall know them.

It is not hard to deduce that the hard, pathway soil is not Christian. Those here never received the Word into their lives in any way. For more on this idea, read R. One of the primary signs of salvation is perseverance. This means that those who are truly saved will endure to the end. They will keep professing their faith in Jesus, they will keep obeying, the will keep repenting, they will keep being sanctified, they will continue to love God and people, and nothing will be able to separate them from the love of God.

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, 25 to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever.

So how can you know if you are truly saved by God? How can you have assurance of salvation? We must examine ourselves, we must pass the test of faith, but ultimately we must rest secure in the truth that God is faithful even when we are not. God alone is the reason you are saved. Trust God for your salvation and rejoice in the assurance he alone can give. How to Pray With Power James Posted on Monday, October 2, Jesus rose from the grave and appeared to hundreds of people so that you would have a living Savior and Lord:.

You must agree with God that you have sinned against Him and that you deserve judgment for it. You must repent of your sin, which means that you turn in a new direction away from your sin and commit to following God, relying on Him for the strength to do so.

For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.

You must reject any and all of your own supposed good works as completely ineffective to save yourself and mend your separation from God — church attendance, religious activities like communion, baptism, or prayer, charitable giving, personal goodness and kindness, helping the poor and disadvantaged, good intentions, etc. You must follow Jesus Christ as your Lord master by obeying Him and His Words — this is the evidence of one who is saved. By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.

You have only two choices in dealing with your sin:. Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. The following passage from the New Testament letter to the Ephesians gives a before and after picture of one who believes in Jesus Christ and is saved.

Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved , and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. Do you believe this? This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.

I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit,. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. And why not do evil that good may come? Their condemnation is just. You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.

And yet one of you is a devil. For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt.

For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.

Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them.

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place.