By David Phillips
Yesterday morning’s sermon was named after that famous phrase that you hear folks say so often, obviously without really understanding all that it means: Accept Jesus as Your Personal Savior. We noted that it is a good sentiment, but we need to be sure we understand all that is involved. We discussed these 4 things:
- Accepting Jesus as your personal savior means accepting His authority for all things religious, and rejecting the human authority that is prevalent in man-made churches. It is Jesus who makes our salvation possible, His blood provides our cleansing, He tasted death for each of us (Heb.2:9). Why would anyone reject His authority and think anything profitable could come from it?
- Accepting Jesus as your personal savior means accepting His terms of salvation, and rejecting man’s terms. Proverbs 14:12 testifies to the fact that man doesn’t get to decide what is right, or what the terms of entry for heaven should be. No matter what denominationalism teaches, Jesus demands faith, repentance, confession and baptism. Those things may not be attractive, or convenient, or even desirable to some, but the Lord set the terms.
- Accepting Jesus as your personal savior means accepting His doctrine or teaching, and rejecting all man-made teaching. Not only does the New Testament set forth the Lord’s teaching (Heb.2:1-4), but it also contains several plain warnings about false teachers and the destruction that awaits those who follow them.
- Accepting Jesus as your personal savior means accepting His church, and rejecting all others. Some might say that we are free to choose the church we desire, because they are all the same. That’s almost like saying that all licenses are the same, whether hunting, fishing, drivers, or real estate licenses. Try offering anything but a driver’s license to a trooper who pulls you over, and you’ll see that so far as he is concerned, there is only ONE license. Jesus’ church is the ONE characterized and described in the New Testament, and though many others claim to have valid churches, only the one in the NT is His church which He built, which He purchased with His blood (Matt.16:18, Acts 20:28).
- Clearly, Jesus desires to come into the heart of every person, but being saved involves quite a bit more than just giving Him permission to come in.