“Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” So they said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household” (Acts 16:30-31).

Disclaimer: I don’t mean to step on toes.  I’m just a bad dancer.

“What must I do to be saved?”  This is THE question, isn’t it?  The question for non-Christians, theologians, new believers, and stay at home moms; the question for doubters and hopers, farmers and bikers, anyone and everyone.  The answer is simple.  Believe on the Lord Jesus.  That is all you will find in scripture.  There’s no pray and fast track to salvation. Soteriology has no political ideology.  Pro-life isn’t eternal life.  A six day creation doesn’t make you a new creation.  You can believe Left Behind and still be left behind.  Going to Bible study doesn’t mean you’ll come to Jesus.  Your denomination can’t secure God’s nomination.  Tradition won’t keep you from perdition.

What does scripture say?

“You are also saved by it, if you hold to the message I proclaimed to you…that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day….” (1 Cor. 15:2-4).

“The one who has the Son has life. The one who doesn’t have the Son of God does not have life” (1 John 5:12).

“Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son” (2 John 9).

“What can we do to perform the works of God?” they asked.  Jesus replied, “This is the work of God—that you believe in the One He has sent” (John 6:28-29).

“If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10:9).

Jesus saves.  This is the stuff of peeling sandwich boards, of flickering neon signs outside run down shelters.  The phrase has been hackneyed to death.  Regurgitated by every tract.  Scrawled in bathroom stalls.  Spray painted on trains.  Set forth in laws, history, poetry, prophecy, types, shadows, gospels, and epistles.  But we still find all kinds of strings to attach to salvation.  Strings that criss and cross and weave twisted webs.  Ties that bind.  Trip wires.  Clotheslines.

Christ IS salvation.  Believe on the Lord Jesus, whether you’re a neophyte or a troglodyte.  And you’ll be saved.  “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to people, and we must be saved by it” (Acts 4:12).