What Must I Do to Be Saved? — KJV Bible Study

(My personal thoughts — redemption and the forgiveness of sins are IN HIM. This is why we are baptized INTO Him: the blood that washes us, and the forgiveness it buys, are found in the very One we are baptized into.)

(My personal thoughts — read it slowly, and know that it was for YOU. The face that made the stars was disfigured beyond recognition. The back that holds up all things was laid open by the whip. The hands that healed the leper were driven through with iron. His bones stood out to be counted. The sweat fell like blood before a single nail was set. He was not overpowered: He gave His back willingly; He did not hide His face. Every stripe was your sin laid on Him, every wound your wrongdoing, every drop your debt. And when it was finished, blood and water ran out of His side — the blood to wash you, and the water to bury you into Him. So when you are told to repent and be baptized, you are not being asked to do something hard. You are being asked to receive, on your knees, what cost Him all of that.)

(My personal thoughts — set these two side by side and let them teach. In the wilderness, dying people were not told to earn a cure. They were told to look, in faith, at what God lifted up on a pole — and they lived. Jesus says that pole was a picture of His own cross. Believing is the look. Before a person repents of anything, or obeys anything, he must first look with his whole heart at the One lifted up, and trust Him. And notice Abraham: he believed, and God counted it to him for righteousness — before the law, before any ceremony. Faith is where it all begins. But watch how quickly faith moves to obedience in the next verses — the same night, the same hour.)

(My personal thoughts — only twice in the whole Bible is this exact question asked out loud: here in the jail at Philippi, and at Pentecost in Acts 2. Set the two answers side by side. The crowd at Pentecost had already heard and already believed — that is why they were cut to the heart — so Peter began at the next step: repent, and be baptized. The jailer knew nothing yet, so Paul began at the first step: believe — and then spoke the word of the Lord to him, and the same hour of the night the man was baptized. Two beginnings, one road. Believing is not a rival to baptism, and baptism is not a rival to believing; faith is the heart that obeys, and the same hour is soon enough.)

(My personal thoughts — do not think this is a small word, said once and finished with. Repent, and words like it, sound through the whole Bible one hundred and twelve times — forty-six in the Old Testament, and sixty-six in the New. From the prophets crying turn, turn, to John crying repent, to the Lord Himself, to the apostles, to the risen Christ writing to the churches — one call runs from Genesis to Revelation: TURN. God has never once stopped calling people to it. And no one may stop doing it.)

(My personal thoughts — it is not the water that saves. It is the answer of a good conscience toward God: the blood applied to the conscience through the obedience of baptism, and the person raised to a new life.)

(My personal thoughts — here is the same truth pictured long ago. Naaman was a great man, and a leper, and he was told to do a small thing: go wash in the Jordan seven times, and be clean. He was angry, and expected some grand gesture, and thought the rivers of his own country were better than the waters of Israel — just as people still stumble over such a simple command. But it was never the water of the Jordan that healed him; it was obeying the word of God in the water God named. He went down and dipped seven times, and his skin came back like the skin of a LITTLE CHILD. That is how a person is born again: not by some great effort of their own, but by going down in obedience, and coming up a new child, and clean.)

(My personal thoughts — hold these two truths together, and there is no fight between them. Grace is the gift; faith receives it; and baptism is not a work that earns anything, any more than Naaman earned his healing by dipping in a river, or the dying earned their lives by looking at the brass serpent. God provided everything; the person only obeys and receives. The man coming up out of the water has nothing to boast of — he was buried, and God raised him. It was said above of 1 Peter 3:21, and it is true here too: it is not the water, and it is not the works of our own hands. It is grace, received through the obedience of faith. And the very next verse says what the works are for: not the ground of salvation, but its fruit — we are God's own workmanship, made new in Christ Jesus so that we would walk in the good works He already prepared for us. No one who obeys the command has earned the gift, and no one who calls it earning has understood the command.)

(My personal thoughts — notice WHOSE sins were washed away by this obedience. Saul of Tarsus persecuted the way of Christ to the death. He arrested men and women and dragged them to prison, a blasphemer and a persecutor of God's people. The Lord Himself met him on the road, struck him to the ground, and spoke to him from heaven. And STILL, three days later, Ananias was sent to say: get up, and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord. If the light on the road to Damascus did not wash Saul's sins away, but the water of obedience did, then let no one imagine his own sins are removed some easier way than God gave to the worst of sinners.)

(My personal thoughts — the Holy Spirit is not a reward for a select few. He is the SEAL of the King on those who are His own, and the DOWN PAYMENT — the first part of the inheritance paid in advance — that you belong to Him until the day of redemption. So the question stands plainly, and it must be asked: have you received the Holy Spirit? Because the word says it clearly: anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him. A letter without the seal is not the King's letter. A person without the Spirit is not yet Christ's. Seek Him until you have Him.)

(My personal thoughts — notice how often the word says DAILY. They continued daily. They broke bread from house to house. They encouraged one another daily. This is not a religion of one hour on Sunday, and one hour in the middle of the week — a seat warmed twice, and the rest of life a person's own. The first church lived it every day, together, and the Lord added to them daily those who were being saved. A faith set aside until the next meeting is a faith that hardens through the deceitfulness of sin. He is not asking for a visit. He is asking for a life.)

(My personal thoughts — notice what the Lord does with the lukewarm. Not only the cold, but the lukewarm — the one who has just enough religion to be comfortable, and not enough to be alive — that one He will spit out of His mouth. To stay joined to Him is not to hang on by a thread, warm on Sunday and cold all week. It is to burn. Better hot, He says, or even cold, than that middle thing that makes Him sick. Stay in Him, and let Him keep you burning to the end.)

(My personal thoughts — a baby in Christ may reach for the flame even after the Father has said no. That is the stumble of a child who is still learning, and the Father knows it. A grown son or daughter should know better. But here is the mercy of it: even when we sin, we are not thrown away. We have an Advocate — Jesus Christ the righteous — who is always alive and always speaking to the Father on our behalf. So we get back up. A just man falls seven times and rises again. We examine ourselves, confess what we did, turn from it, and go back to our Father's business, leaving the past behind — because God has already removed our sins as far as the east is from the west, and He remembers them no more. But do not turn this mercy into an excuse. Ezekiel gives the other side: a righteous man who turns away from his righteousness and dies in his sin will not be saved by the righteousness he once had. Peter shows the same picture in the New Testament, and he quotes the old proverb to do it: a dog going back to its vomit, a washed pig going back to the mud — someone who escaped the filth of the world through knowing the Lord, and then turned back into it, worse off at the end than at the beginning. And Jesus says to those who worked evil in His name, "I never knew you." Now hold both edges of this sword, and do not blunt either one. The Lord says no one can snatch His sheep out of His hand — no enemy, no power, no man. That safety is real, and it is His grip that holds, not ours. But look at how He describes those sheep: they hear His voice, and they follow Him. The word never shows a sheep torn from His hand; it shows the washed one turning and walking back to the mud, of his own will. Scripture holds both of these — the hand that cannot be broken open, and the warning not to turn away — and it does not melt them into one easy formula, so neither will we. Do not despair when you fall: the Advocate is real, and the road home is open. Do not presume you can turn back freely: the warning is real too. Fall, but rise. Rise, and endure to the end.)

(My personal thoughts — mark it well: if what we believe does not agree with what the messengers preached, then WE are wrong, not them. They saw Him, and heard Him, and were sent by Him. Whoever listens to God listens to them. To put a teacher above the apostles is to listen to the spirit of error.)

(My personal thoughts — even in the apostles' own day, people slipped in and twisted the teaching. How much more in our own time, when so much of what is taught is new, has no root in the old word, and is not handled correctly. Something is not true because many people believe it, and not because it is old in the mouths of men. It is true only if it agrees with what the messengers delivered.)

(My personal thoughts — and this is exactly that hour: people who will not put up with sound teaching, but gather teachers for themselves by the crowd — as many as will feed the itch of their ears, and tell them what they want to hear. A person can build a whole house of teachers, every one agreeing with him, and every one wrong. The truth was never proven by a majority, never made true by the number who believe it, and never bent to please the ear. Turn away from the truth, and you are turned — the word says it — to fables.)

(My personal thoughts — we are not free to pick and choose among God's words, keeping the easy ones and leaving the hard ones. A person lives by EVERY word. To add to it, or to take from it, is to be found a liar before the God who spoke it.)

(My personal thoughts — here is the one stone many people rest their whole argument on: the dying thief was saved, they say, and he was never baptized; therefore baptism is not necessary. Let us weigh it now in the light of the word, and see what it really stands on.)

(My personal thoughts — now weigh the thief in this light. The word never once says he was not baptized. That is something people assume, and then build a whole doctrine on their own assumption. But listen to what the word DOES say: Jerusalem, and ALL Judea, and all the country around the Jordan went out and were baptized, confessing their sins. The common people and the tax collectors were baptized. The prostitutes believed. Only the Pharisees and the lawyers refused, and were not baptized. The thief was no Pharisee — he was one of the people, a criminal, exactly the kind who crowded to John's baptism of repentance. And on the cross he did the very thing baptism was for: he confessed his sin — we are getting what our deeds deserve. Add to that the fact that the Lord's own disciples baptized even more people than John, all through that land, over more than three years. So the truth is the opposite of the excuse: the word does not lead us to a thief who was never baptized, but to one who almost certainly WAS baptized with the rest. Those who lean on him have leaned on a man who was already washed.)

(My personal thoughts — and suppose the very worst, that he was never baptized at all: even then he is no rule for you. He died before the new covenant took effect. A will has no force while the one who made it is still alive, and the LORD had not yet died. So the thief was received the way people were received in the old days, before the door of this new covenant was ever opened. And he was nailed to a cross, hand and foot, and could not come down to be baptized. God requires obedience from a person in what they are able to do. What a dying man COULD not do is no excuse for a living man who CAN. You are not nailed to a cross; you can obey.)

(My personal thoughts — so the whole excuse hangs on an assumption the word never states. It stands against the plain evidence the word does give. That is a house built on the sand, and its fall will be great. But the command stands on the rock, and it has not moved: repent, and be baptized, every one of you.)

(My personal thoughts — yet hear even this with reverence, and not with a careless assumption that you already understand it all. Many have assumed, and been wrong. And we who bring you these words do not claim to know everything. We are still learners, and ready to be corrected by the word and by those who were sent. But we dare not change what the messengers plainly said. So examine it for yourself: if we have been wrong, let the word correct us. But be careful that you are not led astray by listening to the voices of men above the voice of the apostles of the Lamb. We look at this particular question in such detail as one example of how you can still believe something even when the Bible seems, on the surface, to be pushing hard the other way. We must rightly divide the word: we cannot add to it, and we cannot take away from it.)