What is salvation? Salvation is a free gift of God to all who believe. It’s a free gift. It costs nothing. We are saved by grace through faith.
“Faith alone in Christ alone by grace alone.” Full stop.
Salvation is a gift you don’t pay back. If I give you a gift, and then you say, “Here, I want to give you something for what you gave me.” Well, now you’re buying the gift. Now you’re rejecting my free offer of a gift. I’m not saying that when someone does something nice for you, it’s not good later on, to return the favor. But a gift is a gift, right? It has no charge.
Romans 6:23 reminds us, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” What are we being saved from? Paul tells us here that we’re being saved from “the wages of sin.” “The wages of sin is death.” In the garden, God’s warning to Adam was, “in the day that you eat from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall die.” The Hebrew is a little bit stronger. It actually says, “dying, you will die.” What does that mean? It means that the moment Adam ate the fruit, he died spiritually.
What is spiritual death? Spiritual death is separation from God as a result of your spiritual separation from God. Later, it took him 900 and some years to do it. He would die physically. We die physically because of spiritual death. Every one of us is born into this world, spiritually dead, separated from God. Well, God chose to do something about that. He sent His son into the world to go to the cross, to pay the penalty for the sins of the entire world. Having paid that debt, the debt is no longer an issue. What is an issue now is personal decision.
John tells us in John 1:12, “as many as received him Jesus Christ, to them He gave the right to become the children of God, even to those who believe in His name.” God’s hand holds out the gift. God’s hand is “GRACE” reaching out to us. Our hand is “FAITH” reaching up to Him. When GRACE and FAITH come together, that’s when SALVATION takes place. What are we being saved from? We’re being saved from spiritual death. Separation from God, which, unless it’s stopped, it will be eternal.
John 3:18 says, “He who believes in him is not condemned, but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” Unless it is put to it by faith in Jesus Christ, that spiritual death will go on throughout all eternity, because THAT is the wages of sin.
Will you receive THE GIFT or will you reject it?
Learn about “The Simplicity of Salvation” here:
https://basictraining.org/simplicity-of-salvation/
Download or order the free booklet “The Gift” here: https://basictraining.org/the-gift/